in it than of true magnanimity. Nothing is great that is unnatural and
affected. When the earth was shaking beneath you, when the whole heaven
was darkened with sulphurous clouds, when all Nature seemed falling into
its final destruction, to be reading Livy and making extracts was an
absurd affectation. To meet danger with courage is manly, but to be
insensible of it is brutal stupidity; and to pretend insensibility where
it cannot be supposed is ridiculous falseness. When you afterwards
refused to leave your aged mother and save yourself without her, you
indeed acted nobly. It was also becoming a Roman to keep up her spirits
amidst all the horrors of that tremendous scene by showing yourself
undismayed; but the real merit and glory of this part of your behaviour
is sunk by the other, which gives an air of ostentation and vanity to the
whole.

_Pliny the Younger_.--That vulgar minds should consider my attention to
my studies in such a conjuncture as unnatural and affected, I should not
much wonder; but that you would blame it as such I did not apprehend--you,
whom no business could separate from the muses; you, who approached
nearer to the fiery storm, and died by the suffocating heat of the
vapour.

_Pliny the Elder_.--I died in doing my duty. Let me recall to your
remembrance all the particulars, and then you shall judge yourself on the
difference of your behaviour and mine. I was the Prefect of the Roman
fleet, which then lay at Misenum. On the first account I received of the
very unusual cloud that appeared in the air I ordered a vessel to carry
me out to some distance from the shore that I might the better observe
the phenomenon, and endeavour to discover its nature and cause. This I
did as a philosopher, and it was a curiosity proper and natural to an
inquisitive mind. I offered to take you with me, and surely you should