It has been more praised than
studied, or its manifest shortcomings, its occasional clumsiness, its
want of harmony and of feeling for the finer genialities of language,
would be more often present in the consciousness of those who discourse
about it from a superficial acquaintance. With him language was a means
and not an end. If he was plain and even coarse, it was from choice
rather than because he lacked delicacy of perception; for in badinage,
the most ticklish use to which words can be put, he was a master.
PLUTARCH'S MORALS[1]
[Footnote 1: A review of the English translation edited by William W.
Goodwin with an Introduction by Ralph Waldo Emerson.]
Plutarch is perhaps the most eminent example of how strong a hold simple
good humor and good sense lay upon the affections of mankind. Not a man
of genius or heroism himself, his many points of sympathy with both make
him an admirable conductor of them in that less condensed form which is
more wholesome and acceptable to the average mind. Of no man can it be
more truly said that, if not a rose himself, he had lived all his days
in the rose's neighborhood. Such is the delightful equableness of his
temperament and his singular talent for reminiscence, so far is he
always from undue heat while still susceptible of so much enthusiasm as
shall not disturb digestion, that he might seem to have been born
middle-aged.
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