which, in his day, it was pardonable to be ignorant, we have nothing to do at present; but the portion of his history referring to the imitative arts, comprised in the thirty-fourth and two following books of his great work, deserves some notice, and ought certainly to receive attention at the hands of the classical reader.

Flaxman-whose name must ever live in connexion with the greatest poets of antiquity-passes the following high encomium upon this portion of Pliny's history. He remarks that "the whole is arranged with attention to the several improvements in chronological order, with such perspicuity and comprehension, that whenever, from the brevity of the work, we do not find all we wish for, yet, by attending to the information prior and subsequent, we shall easily be enabled to supply the defect from other writings or monuments of antiquity."

This is high praise from a high quarter, and it must be confessed that the history of art would have remained a hopeless enigma, if Pliny's ponderous folio had shared the fate of many of its contemporaries. Quiet and assiduous, yet energetic in the pursuit of his studies, his whole life presented one spectacle of unceasing devotion to the book of nature, and to pursuits calculated to unfold her mysteries. Without neglecting the duties of his high political vocation, he nevertheless gave an amount of time and labour to his darling study which seems unparalleled even in the history of literary enthusiasm.

Like Niebuhr, Pliny the elder possessed the rare ability of combining the anxieties of a public career with the researches of a student's life. He rose at the first dawn of light, and sometimes, like the late Duke of Wellington, indulged in no more rest than was granted by the fitful doze of a few minutes. His whole life would seem to have been the career of an earnest student, for whom the sensual cares of the physical world had little charm, but whose thoughts were ever awakened to the nobler impulses of nature, and to the suggestions of the mighty world around him. He regarded time as the most precious item in the theory of human existence: even in the bath he listened to a secretary, who read some book bearing on one of his favourite subjects. His life was one of knowledge, and spent in the acquisition of knowledge.

Yet, with all our admiration of this great writer's earnest feeling for, and pursuit of, literature under disadvantages which can scarcely fall to our lot, we must confess that he was rather the collector of miscellaneous information than the efficient architect of a really correct and critical work. We may fairly assume that he left scarcely a single treatise unread, that he had added no small amount of original experience to his vast reading, and that his pen was invariably guided by at least the desire to represent fairly what he had learnt in other quarters. But it is equally certain that, in many instances, he has utterly mistaken the meaning of older writers; that he has

occasionally mixed up two or three stories connected with the same subject; and that his credulity at times approaches the ludicrous. Moreover, his work suffers under the false rhetoric which succeeded the more refined taste of the Augustan age, and the reader is frequently annoyed by the absence of descriptive power, while he is at the same time shocked by the overstrained attempts at eloquence, where plainness of style is all that the writer's intention or the subject demands.

If

The labours of Pliny in reference to ancient art have formed a fertile theme of discussion among critics of all ages. From the elaborate treatise of Junius, "de pictura veterum," down to the recent works of Sillig, and his clever German opponent, Pliny's three books on ancient art have monopolized an attention unparalleled among æsthetic works of antiquity. his credulity has sometimes imposed upon such writers as Raphael Mengs, it has, at the same time, been rather good-natured and easy than dangerous. If he has believed too much on the faith of others, he has at all events started no new "heresy in art" himself. He must be regarded as one who told honestly what he knew, or believed he knew; not as one who tried to be clever about the works of other men. His disposition, as his life, was wholly unobtrusive; and his writings are such as naturally spring from one who had little originality, but unparalleled diligence. Wel

read his works, but feel greater admiration for the man than the writer.

Were not the sad story of his death-a death so thoroughly earned in the pursuit of the knowledge of nature's most fearful operations-so well known, we should feel tempted to detail the event in the words of his nephew, the junior Pliny, and most elegant of epistolary correspondents. But it is time to pass on to the mention of another writer, who, though less popularly known, divides the honour with Pliny of having given systematic attention to ancient art, with perhaps something more of positive experience in what he described.

If Pausanias (of whose private life we know nothing worth mentioning) be inferior to Pliny as a rhetorician, he has at least kept free from the turgidity and affectation which distinguished the rhetoric of the Roman augur. His "Itinerary of Greece" presents a strange contrast to the florid descriptions of modern travellers. Not feeling bound to fall into ecstasies with everything he sees, his description of Greece rather reminds one of Madame Ida Pfeiffer's quiet, quaint writings-plainly saying what the author witnessed, but not indulging in declamation as to how he was impressed by it, what associations rose in his mind, and so on. Yet we must confess to some feeling of tedium in reading Pausanias. The facts are crowded upon one another in a manner that prevents us enjoy

ing or resting upon a single impression; legends, the loveliest flowers of Attic or Eleusinic mysticism, are hurried through in a graceless and unpoetical style that half-satirizes their existence; and ancient authors are quoted rather as a scholiast would quote them, thah an enlightened traveller. And yet there is no denying to Pausanias the character of a thorough traveller. Although incapable of taking broad views of any subject, it is well observed that "his description is minute and generally complete," and that “he seems to have busied himself as a man would do if he were making an inventory or catalogue. There is no attempt to set off the things which he describes by any ornament of language; and yet, such is the power of beautiful objects when portrayed in the simplest words, that some of his descriptions are beautiful merely by virtue of the beauty of the objects described. Buildings, monuments, statues, and paintings were the chief objects which he has registered. In connexion with them, he collected and recorded local traditions and mythological stories in abundance. Natural objects, rivers, mountains, caves, were also noticed in his description, but nearly always in connexion with the mythological stories attached to them. Yet he was a careful observer of natural phenomena, and many curious facts of this kind are scattered through his work."*

* Penny Cyclopædia.