striking illustrations consisting in the exhibitions of character
and experience which they contain.

Plutarch's 'Lives,' though written nearly eighteen hundred years
ago, like Homer's 'Iliad,' still holds its ground as the greatest
work of its kind. It was the favourite book of Montaigne; and to
Englishmen it possesses the special interest of having been
Shakspeare's principal authority in his great classical dramas.
Montaigne pronounced Plutarch to be "the greatest master in
that kind of writing"--the biographic; and he declared that
he "could no sooner cast an eye upon him but he purloined
either a leg or a wing."

Alfieri was first drawn with passion to literature by reading
Plutarch. "I read," said he, "the lives of Timoleon, Caesar,
Brutus, Pelopidas, more than six times, with cries, with tears,
and with such transports, that I was almost furious.... Every time
that I met with one of the grand traits of these great men, I was
seized with such vehement agitation as to be unable to sit still."
Plutarch was also a favourite with persons of such various minds
as Schiller and Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon and Madame Roland.
The latter was so fascinated by the book that she carried it to
church with her in the guise of a missal, and read it
surreptitiously during the service.

It has also been the nurture of heroic souls such as Henry IV. of
France, Turenne, and the Napiers. It was one of Sir William
Napier's favourite books when a boy. His mind was early imbued by
it with a passionate admiration for the great heroes of antiquity;
and its influence had, doubtless, much to do with the formation of