eloquence was of the kind most esteemed in parliament, ready, weighty, perspicuous, condensed. His exposition of principles, though neither original nor recondite, was clear and comprehensive; his reasoning was ingenious, close, and vigorous, supported by a masterly array of facts set forth in a chaste and idiomatic diction, enforced by felicitous illustrations, enlivened with a caustic and powerful satire, and recommended by a delivery earnest, impressive, and unaffected. In private life he was kindhearted and liberal. He married in 1791 Catherine, only daughter of John M'Causland, Esq., M.P. for Donegal, by whom he had issue six sons and five daughters. His eldest son, the lord bishop of Tuam, succeeded him in his title and estates.—J. T.
PLUQUET, François André, a French abbé, was born at Bayeux in 1716. He became a canon in the cathedral of his native town, and afterwards professor of history at Paris. He died in 1790. His writings are chiefly philosophical; and among them are an examination of the doctrine of fatalism, a refutation of Hobbes, and a translation of Father Noel's collection of the Chinese Classics.—W. J. P.
PLUTARCH, like Homer and Æsop, is one of the few Greek writers who belong not more to Greece than to the world. If extensive and long-continued popularity is justly regarded as one of the best tests of some substantial excellence in an author, there is no ancient writer who can stand to be tried by this test more successfully than the author of the "Parallel Lives of Famous Greeks and Romans." This most popular of all Greek writers was a native of Chæronea, a well-known town in the west of Bœotia, to the north of Mount Parnassus. The exact date of his birth, as of his death, is unknown; but it is certain that he was a young man when Nero visited Greece in a.d. 66 (De ei apud Delphos. c. 1. Vita Anton., 87), and that he flourished in the time of Trajan, a.d. 98-117, to whom his book of military and kingly aphorisms is dedicated, and under whom Suidas says that he held public appointments. His occupation in Italy indeed, both as a public functionary and as a teacher of philosophy, is distinctly witnessed by himself in the introduction to his life of Demosthenes, where he confesses that he knew the Romans better from a large experience of their affairs, than from a curious skill in their language. He seems to have retired latterly to Chæronea, his native place—at least his life of Demosthenes was certainly written there; and, if we consider that he was twenty years old when Nero visited Greece, and that he lived out the reign of Trajan, he must have been at least seventy when he died. The works of Plutarch fall naturally into two great classes—the well-known biographies, and the collection of moral and miscellaneous essays. The "Lives" have been indorsed by the approbation of centuries; and they will still stand the severest judgment of any critic who shall not insist on their being what they were never meant to be. What Plutarch designed, as he himself in the preface to the life of Alexander has specially informed us, was, not a curious record of connected historical events, but a characteristic portraiture of notable men. That he has attained this object in a style peculiarly attractive and effective, is quite certain. His lives of Pericles, Nicias, Conon, Alcibiades, and Lysander are speaking portraits, from whose merits no philological microscopes, or minute historical criticism of curious-peeping Germans, can detract. Niebuhr, in reference to his own Cyclopean labours, might no doubt be entitled to call the author of the Roman lives an "extremely superficial and easy writer." But Niebuhr was aiming at one thing, and Plutarch at another; and even with regard to Roman history, where he was naturally least at home, Professor Long, a most adequate judge, has recorded this opinion—"I have read Plutarch with much care, and I venture to say that, notwithstanding all his blunders, a good critic will find that his accounts of Roman matters will stand the test of inquiry better than those persons suppose who only ridicule and have not studied him. It is not unusual for men who may have more wit than Plutarch, and less modesty, to say something of another which is not true, for the sake of saying something which they think witty. If Plutarch was not always wise, he was at least always honest."—(Cl. Mus. iii. 89.) To this we may add that if he is not always wise, he is at least generally wise; that the whole tone and temper of his writings is that which belongs to a healthy-minded, cheerful, unaffected, uncorrupted practical philosopher; and that in an age peculiarly tried by moral debasement, religious scepticism, and rhetorical conceit, he remained pure in heart, lofty in faith, mellow in wisdom, and natural in style. A master of the Greek language in the highest sense he certainly was not; the articulation of his sentences is sometimes awkward, and their motion lumbering. But his occasional faults of style are nobly redeemed by the useful tendency and naturalness of his tone, and his entire freedom from those many vices of style that spring from the ambition of fine writing. His "Moral Essays," though less read than his "Lives," are not less worthy of perusal. "They are as full of good matter as an egg is full of meat," said Robert Southey, who was one of the best judges of books that ever lived. In fact, whether in the shape of essay or historical sketch, Plutarch is ever the most kindly and the most pleasing of philosophical companions, and no reader will ever weary of him who considers that the concrete exhibition of life is infinitely more valuable to living men than all speculations about life, and that all philosophy is vain which does not end in practical wisdom, of which wisdom the form is virtue and the inspiration is love. The works of Plutarch were early translated into Latin, and obtained a wide circulation in that form before the great original was generally found on the shelves of scholars. The first Latin collection of the "Lives" was published at Rome in 1470, 2 vols., folio. The most celebrated modern translation is that of Amyot, 1559, on which the English translation of North, London, 1612, is based. After that we have the translation of the "Lives" by several hands, to which Dryden lent his name; then that of Langhorne; and lastly, the accurate and elegant revisal of Dryden's collection, by Arthur Clough, London, 1859, 3 vols.; which will likely remain the standard Plutarch of every well-furnished English library. Of these translations an excellent account is given in the Quarterly Review, October, 1861. Of the "Moral Essays" there is an old English translation by Holland. The best Greek editions are by Xylander, Coray, Schæfer, Sintenis; of the "Moralia" by Wyttenbach.—J. S. B.
PO, Pietro del, Italian painter and engraver, was born at Palermo in 1610. He was a scholar and imitator of Domenichino; painted at Rome and afterwards at Naples several altarpieces and cabinet pictures, which were much admired; but is most favourably known as an engraver. By him there are thirty-two freely executed prints after Annibale Carracci, Domenichino, and Poussin. Pietro del Po died at Naples in 1692.—His son, Giacomo del Po—born at Rome in 1654; died in 1726—a scholar of his father and of N. Poussin, was a rapid and skilful painter, without much originality. He was chiefly employed in decorating the mansions of the Neapolitan nobles with mythological paintings in oil and fresco in the then prevalent taste.—Teresa del Po, daughter of Pietro, painted in oil and miniature, and engraved very cleverly in the manner of her father. She died at Naples in 1716.—J. T—e.
POCOCK, Edward, a learned orientalist, was born at Oxford, 8th November, 1604, and was the son of the vicar of Cheveley in Berkshire. He got his early education at the free school of Thame, and at the age of fourteen he entered Magdalen hall, removing early in 1620 to Corpus Christi college, in which he had been elected to a scholarship. He became A.M. in 1626. He had been early attracted to the study of the oriental languages; and such were his ardour and success that he prepared for the press, from a MS. in the Bodleian library, those portions of the Syriac New Testament which had not been edited, and the work was published at Leyden in 4to in 1630. He received priest's orders in 1629, and was appointed chaplain to the English factory at Aleppo. Here he remained for about six years, and improved the opportunity of perfecting his knowledge of several eastern tongues. He had also a commission from Archbishop Laud to make a collection of MSS. and coins for the university of Oxford. In 1636 he returned at the invitation of Laud to fill a chair of Arabic, which had been recently founded by him in Oxford. After delivering a course of lectures from this chair he went to the East, staying for a period at Constantinople for the collection of MSS. On his return to England in 1640, his patron Laud was in the Tower, but he recommenced his lectures at Oxford. On the execution of the archbishop the endowment of his chair was seized, and he retired to Chaldrey in Berkshire, the rectory of which was conferred upon him by his college in 1643. In 1641 he had assisted Selden in the publication of his Origines Alexandrinæ, and by his interference he obtained the restoration of his salary. In 1648 he became professor of Hebrew at Oxford, and the king, then a prisoner in the Isle of Wight, added a canonry of Christ Church, the arrangement being sanctioned by parliament. In 1649 he published "Specimen Historiæ Arabum,"
