He then presents us with a treatise on Mineralogy, in which he has accumulated every possible kind of information relative to the use of gold, silver, bronze, erd other metals; a subject which not unnaturally leads him into repeated digressions relative to money, jewels, plate, statues, and statuaries. Mineral pigments next occupy his attention, with many interesting notices of the great painters of Greece; from which he passes on to the various kinds of stone and materials employed in building, and the use of marble for the purposes of sculpture, including a notice of that art and of the most eminent sculptors. The last Book is devoted to an account of gems and precious stones, and concludes with an eulogium on his native country, as alike distinguished for its fertility, its picturesque beauties, and the natural endowments and high destinies of its pepole.
From the writings of Pliny we gather of course a large amount of information as to his opinions and the constitution of his mind. His credulity, it must be admitted, is great in the extreme; though, singularly enough, he severely taxes the Greeks with the same failing[1]. Were we not assured from other sources that he was eminently successful in life, was in the enjoyment of opulence, and honoured with the favour and confidence of princes[2], the remarks which he frequently makes on human life, in the Seventh Book more especially, would have led us to the conclusion that he was a disappointed man, embittered against his fellow-creatures, and dissatisfied with the terms on which the tenure of life is granted to us. He opens that Book with a preface replete with querulous dissatisfaction and repinings at the lot of man — the only Tearful' animal — he says[3]. He repines at the helpless and wretched condition of the infant at the moment it is ushered into life, and the numerous pains and
- ↑ B. viii. c. 34. His acrimony may however, in this instance, have outstripped his discretion. Though indebted to them for by far the largest amount of his information on almost every subject, he seems to have had a strong aversion to the Greeks, and repeatedly charges them with lying, viciousness, boasting, and vanity. See B.ii. c.112; B. iii. c. 6; B. v.c.1; B. xv. c. 5; B. xix. c. 26; B. xxviii. c. 29; B. xxxvii. e. 74.
- ↑ Of Vespasian and Titus for certain; and probably of Nero, who appointed him " procurator Cæsaris" in Spain.
- ↑ Even on that point he contradicts himself in the next Book. See B. viii. c. 19, and 64, in reference to the lion and the horse.
