LIPE AND WRITINGS OF PLINY. 
xvii 
He then presents us with a treatise on Mineralogy, in 
which he has accumulated every possible kind of inform- 
ation relative to the use of gold, silver, bronze, and 
other metals ; a subject which not unnaturally leads him 
into repeated digressions relative to money, jewels, plate, 
statues, and statuaries. Mineral pigments next occupy his 
attention, with many interesting notices of the great painters 
of Greece ; from which he passes on to the various kinds of 
stone and materials employed in building, and the use of 
marble for the purposes of sculpture, including a notice of 
that art and of the most eminent sculptors. The last Book 
is devoted to an account of gems and precious stones, and 
concludes with an eulogium on his native country, as alike 
distinguished for its fertility, its picturesque beauties, and 
the natural endowments and high destinies of its pepole. 
From the writings of Pliny we gather of course a large 
amount of information as to his opinions and the constitution 
of his mind. His credulity, it must be admitted, is great in 
the extreme ; though, singularly enough, he severely taxes the 
Greeks with the same failing ^ Were we not assured from 
other sources that he was eminently successful in life, was in 
the enjoyment of opulence, and honoured with the favour and 
confidence of princes^, the remarks which he frequently 
makes on human life, in the Seventh Book more especially, 
would have led us to the conclusion that he was a disap-. 
pointed man, embittered against his fellow-creatures, and 
dissatisfied with the terms on which the tenure of life is 
granted to us. He opens that Book with a preface replete 
with querulous dissatisfaction and repinings at the lot of 
man — ^the only ' tearful ' animal — he says^. He repines at 
the helpless and vn^etched condition of the infant at the 
moment it is ushered into life, and the numerous pains and 
^ B. viii. c. 34. His acrimony may however, in this instance, have 
outstripped his discretion. Though indebted to them for by far the larg- 
est amount of his information on almost every subject, he seems to have 
had a strong aversion to the Grreeks, and repeatedly charges them with 
lying, viciousness, boasting, and vanity. See B. ii. c. 112 j B. iii. c. 6 ; 
B. V. c. 1 ; B. XV. c. 5 ; B. xix. c. 26 ; B. xxviii. c. 29 ; B. xxxvii. c. 74. 
2 Of Yespasian and Titus for certain ; and probably of Nero, who 
appointed him "procurator Csesaris" in Spain. 
Even on that point he contradicts himself in the next Book. See 
B. viii. 0. 19, and 64, in reference to the Hon and the horse. 
h 
