" But if they are borrowed, they
have none of the discordant effect of the _purpureus pannus_, for the
warm sympathy of his nature assimilates them thoroughly and makes them
his own. Oddly enough, it is through his memory that Plutarch is truly
original. Who ever remembered so much and yet so well? It is this
selectness (without being overfastidious) that gauges the natural
elevation of his mind. He is a gossip, but he has supped with Plato or
sat with Alexander in his tent to bring away only memorable things. We
are speaking of him, of course, at his best. Many of his essays are
trivial, but there is hardly one whose sands do not glitter here and
there with the proof that the stream of his thought and experience has
flowed down through auriferous soil. "We sail on his memory into the
ports of every nation," says Mr. Emerson admirably in his Introduction
to Goodwin's Plutarch's "Morals." No doubt we are becalmed pretty often,
and yet our old skipper almost reconciles us with our dreary isolation,
so well can he beguile the time, when he chooses, with anecdote and
quotation.
It would hardly be extravagant to say that this delightful old proser,
in whom his native Boeotia is only too apparent at times, and whose
mind, in some respects, was strictly provincial, had been more operative
(if we take the "Lives" and the "Morals" together) in the thought and
action of men than any other single author, ancient or modern.
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