Here is that which is so
attractive to all men,--the literature of aristocracy shall I call it?--
the picture of the best persons, sentiments, and manners, by the
first master, in the best times,--portraits of Pericles, Alcibiades,
Crito, Prodicus, Protagoras, Anaxagoras, and Socrates, with the
lovely background of the Athenian and suburban landscape. Or who can
overestimate the images with which he has enriched the minds of men,
and which pass like bullion in the currency of all nations? Read the
"Phaedo," the "Protagoras," the "Phaedrus," the "Timaeus," the
"Republic," and the "Apology of Socrates." 5. Plutarch cannot be
spared from the smallest library: first, because he is so readable,
which is much; then, that he is medicinal and invigorating. The
Lives of Cimon, Lycurgus, Alexander, Demosthenes, Phocion, Marcellus
and the rest, are what history has of best. But this book has taken
care of itself, and the opinion of the world is expressed in the
innumerable cheap editions, which make it as accessible as a
newspaper. But Plutarch's "Morals" is less known, and seldom
reprinted. Yet such a reader as I am writing to can as ill spare it
as the "Lives." He will read in it the essays "On the Daemon of
Socrates," "On Isis and Osiris," "On Progress in Virtue," "On
Garrulity," "On Love," and thank anew the art of printing, and the
cheerful domain of ancient thinking.
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