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every point but one I have found my own judgment confirmed by 
his, and I now read with entire acceptance the Professor’s version 
of the particular sentence in question : — “ For although he perished 
by a memorable casualty, like cities and their populations, in a 
calamity which overtook the most beautiful regions, and is thus 
destined, as it were, to live for ever ; though too he himself was the 
author of very many works which the world will not allow to die ; 
yet the continued existence of his writings will be more ensured by 
the immortality which awaits yours.” * 
With Sir Charles Lyell, with Mr. Bunbury, with (I cannot help 
thinking) the vast majority of those who will examine the letters 
impartially, I fail to detect in these words anything like a proof that 
two great cities were actually then and there destroyed. Tacitus 
may have understood the allusion well enough ; but would any reader 
of the passage as it stands before us so understand it? Why, 
Casaubon actually proposed to alter the nominative plural urbes into 
the genitive singular urbis. That was a mere conjecture, which later 
editors have rightly rejected. But even the mistakes of clever men 
are often suggestive ; and I suspect that this famous scholar not only 
thought that the grammar would be simplified by the proposed 
change, but likewise that the epistle would be rendered more con- 
sistent with itself. He only saw in the letter a reference to one city, 
namely Stabise ’ and consequently could not imagine why the plural 
number should be used. Let us try to place ourselves in the position 
of the men of Casaubon’s day, none of whom had seen the ruins 
which are now known so well. We might possibly have thought his 
conjectural emendation to be highly plausible. 
Let me not, however, be supposed for one moment to underrate 
the interest and value of these two famous letters. Tacitus asked 
for an account of the death of the elder Pliny from his nephew, and 
obtained even more than he asked. The cloud first issuing from the 
* It seems right to give the original. £ ‘ Quamvis enim pulcherrimarum 
clade terrarum, ut populi, ut urbes memorabili casu, quasi semper victurus 
occiderit ; quamvis ipse plurima opera et mansura condiderit, multum tamen 
perpetuitati ejus scriptorum tuorum seternitas addet.” Mr Lewis’s version is 
substantially identical with that given above ; that of Melmoth is too much of 
a paraphrase to be cited in evidence. Professor Sellar has observed, I should 
think with perfect justice, that the Latinity of this silver age had certainly lost 
much of the precision which characterised the writers of the Augustan epoch. 
