Pliny

“ Theodore, standing close beside him, saw the great beads of perspiration gathering on his white forehead, and fairly felt the quiver of excitement that shook his frame. To save Pliny from taking the glass, and entirely uncertain as to what he should do next, he mechanically reached out his hand for it. Dr. Armitage evidently regarded him as an ally, and at once resigned it, saying, with his eyes still fixed on Pliny: "Drink it slowly and enjoy it. I'm sure I don't wonder that you are wasted to a skeleton." ”

“ Pliny was indefatigable as a writer and as a gatherer of knowledge of all sorts, and he and Celsus are well named the Encyclopaedists. He is said to have written twenty books on the war with the Germans, an unknown number on rhetoric and grammar, and thirty-seven on natural history. The latter books alone have come down to our time. Pliny’s nephew, who is known as Pliny the Younger, and who edited the great work of his uncle on natural history, furnishes us, in a letter addressed to the historian Tacitus, with some interesting details regarding the elder Pliny’s manner of life. ”

“ The overflowing humanity of Pliny's temper breaks out upon all occasions, but he discovers it in nothing more strongly than by the impression which this little story appears to have made upon him. True benevolence, indeed, extends itself through the whole compass of existence, and sympathises with the distress of every creature of sensation. ”

“ You've got some cheek, you have, to give a name like that to serpents' eggs, 'eggs which they form out of slaver and the froth of their bodies mingled and which they cast into the air, hissing the while.' It's Pliny's own words I'm quoting! You're not going to treat Pliny also as a fake, I hope! . . . You're a pretty customer! Putting yourself on your guard against me, when I have all my degrees as an ancient Druid, all my diplomas, all [Pg 265] my patents, all my certificates signed by Pliny and Chateaubriand! ”

“ Pliny is by some treated as a mediocrity; but, like our own Horace Walpole, he had the keen sense to see that social routine could be made interesting, and that the man who had the skill to do so might make himself famous. He was genuinely interested in his social environment. And intense interest in one’s subject is one great secret of literary success. Pliny had also the instinct that, if a work is to live, it must have a select distinction of style, which may be criticised, but which cannot be ignored. ”

“ Pliny himself would probably have accepted this criticism as a compliment. The mass of men are little occupied with insoluble questions. And Pliny has probably deserved better of posterity by leaving us a vivid picture of the ordinary life of his time or of his class, rather than an analysis of its spiritual distresses and maladies. ”

“ It is the touching eloquence of one who could not write otherwise than gracefully.
Among the pupils of Quintilian, Pliny the younger took the highest place in the literature of his age. He was born in Como, 61 A.D., and adopted and educated by his maternal uncle, the elder Pliny. He attained great celebrity as a pleader, and stood high in favor with the emperor. His works consist of a panegyric on Trajan, and a collection of letters in ten books. The panegyric is a piece of courtly flattery in accordance with the cringing and fawning manners of the times. ”

“ Arnold?"
Pliny followed, and the three moved silently up to the quiet chamber. Dr. Arnold stood quietly before the sleeper—felt his pulse, bent his head and listened to the beating heart, touched with practiced fingers the swollen veins in his temples, then stood up and turned toward the waiting gentlemen.
"Well, doctor?" said Theodore, with nervous impatience, while Pliny fairly held his breath to hear the answer; it came distinct and firm from the doctor's lips—not harshly, but with terrible truthfulness:
"He is entirely beyond human aid, Mr. Mallery!" ”

“ Pliny was bolstered back among the pillows in the rocking-chair, resting after a walk half way across his room. It was a clear, sharp winter morning, but there was freshness and sunshine in Pliny's room. Both Theodore and Dr. Vincent were his companions. Theodore was making his morning call, and the young doctor was waiting to see what effect the morning walk would have upon the invalid, who was so slowly and feebly rallying back to life. Mrs. Hastings and Dora had gone to Hastings' Hall, where they were now able to spend a small part of each day. ”

“ What a man is Pliny, worth how many Catos! Go now, you who love, and love no more."
You see how smart, how apposite, how clear-cut the verses are, and I can promise you that the whole book is equally good. I will send you a copy as soon as it is published. Meanwhile, give the young man your regard and congratulate the age on producing such genius, which he enhances by the beauty of his morals. He passes his time with Spurinna and Antoninus; he is related to the one, and shares the same house with the other. ”

“ When he reached the height of the fury of youth, the poet died. Or did the sadness of the Christian centuries—now swinging near—shadow his sensitiveness? But how every little broken fragment of his days still shines! Only the sincere, the unforced, has vitality.
What a delightful maker of the mind’s gay moments, was Pliny the Younger! As I read along, the comprehension is forced upon me, that in my day the human mind is not so fine, or I am living at a period of time [20] when something vastly different is being projected. ”

“ I never thought of a sign in my life till Pliny Hastings he came along to-day. Did you ever see Pliny Hastings?"
"No. Tode, I do wish you would begin to study grammar this very evening. You're enough to kill any body the way you talk."
"Oh bother the grammar, I'm telling you about Pliny Hastings. He came along, and says he, 'Halloo, Tode, here you are as large as life in business for yourself. You ought to have a sign,' says he. 'What's your establishment called?' And you may think I felt cheap as long as I lived at the Euclid house, to have no kind of a name for my place. ”

“ Hastings?"
She had spoken rapidly and with the same energy that characterized all her words, but with solemn earnestness. Pliny bowed his head on his two hands, while utter silence reigned; and Theodore, wonder-struck over the turn that the conversation had taken, yet had breath enough left to say [392]
"Lord Jesus, help them, help them. Oh, remember Calvary and the 'many mansions,' and help them both. Let the decision be now." This prayer he repeated and re-repeated. Then suddenly Pliny arose.
"If ever any one on earth needed help and strength it is I," he said, hoarsely. ”

“ Though disproved beyond all question of doubt time and time again by botanists and historians, Pliny's inadvertence is still everywhere current in text-books, pomologies and cyclopaedias—a mis-statement started, repeated and perpetuated from medieval days when to be printed in Pliny was sufficient proof. ”

“ It is hardly a matter of surprise that, fed on such meats, they should wax scornful, and deride their hungry fellow-creatures. It is even less amazing that these fellow-creatures should weary from time to time of the crumbs that fall from their table. It is told of Pliny the younger that, being invited to a dinner, he consented to come on the express condition that the conversation should abound in Socratic discourses. Here was a man equally insensible to ennui and to the sufferings of others. ”

“ Ryan, hold forth last evening. Did you hear him, Mr. Hastings?"
"I did not," answered Pliny, laconically, remembering how far removed from a temperance lecture was the scene in which he had mingled the evening before. He was spared the trouble of further answer by his father's next remark.
"It is a remarkable recent conversion if Pliny has become interested in the temperance question," he said, eyeing him curiously. "I really don't know but total abstinence is a good idea for weak-minded young men who can not control themselves." ”

“ He was always ready to believe the best of any one, always prepared to do a friend a service, devoted to his wife and her relations, and anxious to deal justly and honourably with all men. We have called him vain, and vain he undoubtedly was to an extraordinary degree. But Pliny's vanity is never offensive. The very naivete with which he acknowledges his failing disarms all criticism and merely renders it amusing. Indeed, it is doubtful whether he would have admitted that it was a failing at all, inasmuch as it was his love of praise which spurred him on to literary endeavour. ”

“ The, in all ways very delightful, Epistles [351] of the younger Pliny are not least delightful in the line of literary criticism. |Pliny the Younger: Criticism on the Letters.| Pliny was a confirmed man of letters. In no member of the most interesting group of late Flavian and early Antonine writers do we see more clearly the “bookish” tone which so largely pervaded Roman society. ”

“ Ah, how little they must have had to think about, to have been able to read so much! And when I actually find it reported of the elder Pliny that he was continually reading or being read to, at table, on a journey, or in his bath, the question forces itself upon my mind, whether the man was so very lacking in thought of his own that he had to have alien thought incessantly instilled into him; as though he were a consumptive patient taking jellies to keep himself alive. ”

“ Stephens appeared.
"I thought you were gone, sir," said Pliny, rising in surprise.
"No, I was waiting your movements. Come, young gentlemen, I want you both to come home with me. There is no use in remonstrating, my boy," he added, laying his hand on Theodore's shoulder, as the latter would have spoken. "I have had your and Pliny's rooms ready for you this week past, and have only waited until you were at leisure to take possession. I keep bachelor's hall, you know, and if ever a man needed something new and fresh about him I do. ”

“ Cinders and pumice stones were falling down from the sky, and flames were breaking out of the mountain above. But Pliny would go on: he said that if people were in danger it was his duty to help them; and that he must see this strange cloud, and note down the different shapes into which it changed.
But the hot ashes fell faster and faster; the sea ebbed out suddenly, and almost left them on the beach; and Pliny turned away towards a place called Stabiæ, to the house of an old friend who was just going to escape in a boat. Brave Pliny told him not to be afraid ”

“ Pliny’s character.—Pliny, without being a great man, is a more favourable specimen of character, feeling, and gentlemanly tone, than almost any other Roman author. He avoided censorious writing, and most of the people he mentions are praised. The chief exception is Regulus (Ep. i. 5, etc.) , and possibly also Iavolenus Priscus (vi. 15) . When anybody is blamed, his name is omitted unless he is dead or has been banished.
Ep. vii. 28, i, ‘Ais quosdam apud te reprehendisse, tamquam amicos meos ex omni occasione ultra modum laudem. ”

“ He writes with delight, but without pretending to be a connoisseur, of an antique statuette which he had purchased out of a legacy. Some rich men in Rome had the mania for antiques—Corinthian bronzes were the rage in Pliny's day—as badly as those who haunt our modern sale-rooms. Pliny's hobby, if he had been living in our time, would probably have been books. He is one of the most bookish men of antiquity. Wherever he went his books went with him; in his carriage, in his gardens they never left his side. He betrays, moreover, a taste for the beauties of nature which is distinctly un-Roman. ”

“ I had just brains enough left to have both gentlemen taken to the hotel and come for you."
Arrived at the Euclid House the two young men went up the steps and through the halls so familiar to both of them, and sought at once the room where Pliny had been placed. Two physicians were busy about him, but they drew back thoughtfully as Pliny, catching a glimpse of the new-comer, uttered an eager exclamation.
"It's no use," he said, wildly, as Theodore bent over him. "No use, you see; the imps have made up their mind to have me, and they'll get me, body and soul. I'm bound—I can't stir. ”

“ Do you know she is utterly alone? Rick's wife is in her room with the child, and Rick and Jim just went down the walk together."
Pliny seemed nothing loth, and the two descended to the dear little parlor where so many [390] happy hours had been passed. Winny had turned down the gas to its lowest ebb, and was curled into a corner of the sofa, giving up to the form of grief in which she most indulged—utter, white silence. She sat erect as the two young men entered, and Theodore turned on the gas; Pliny took the other corner of the sofa, and Theodore the chair opposite them. ”

“ Of the women of the conservative ruling classes we have pleasant glimpses in the letters of Pliny, which picture an intelligent and sympathetic family life that constantly recalls our own. His wife, Calphurnia, sets his verses to music and sings them, greatly to his surprise and delight. She has a taste for books and commits his compositions to memory. He says she has an excellent understanding, consummate prudence, and an affection for her husband that attests the purity of her heart. It is not his person but his character that she loves, so he is assured of lasting harmony. ”