It is a proof of the intrinsic charm of Plutarch’s Lives, that thus, notwithstanding the imperfect manner in which they have been, up to this time, presented to English readers, they should have been so constantly and so generally read.[E] They have given equal delight to all ages and to all classes.  The heavy folio has been taken from its place on the lower shelves in the quiet libraries of English country-houses, and been read by old men at their firesides, by girls in trim gardens, by boys who cared for no other classic.  The cheap double-column octavo has travelled in peddlers’ carts to all the villages of New England, to the backwoodsman’s cabin in the West.  It has taken its place on the clock-shelf, with only the Bible, the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and the Almanac for its companions.  No other classic author, with, perhaps, the single exception of Aesop, has been so widely read in modern times; and the popular knowledge of the men of Greece and Rome is derived more from Plutarch than from all other ancient authors put together.  The often-repeated saying of Theodore Gaza, who, being once asked, if learning should suffer a general shipwreck, and he had the choice of saving one author, which he would select, is said to have replied, “Plutarch,”—­“and probably might give this reason,” says Dryden, “that in saving him he should secure the best collection of them all,”—­this saying is but a sort of prophecy of the decision of the common world, who have chosen Plutarch from all the rest, and find, as Amyot says, “no one else so profitable and so pleasant to read as he."[F]

[Footnote E:  We have not spoken of Mr. Long’s translations of Select Lives from Plutarch, which were published in the series of Knight’s Weekly Volumes, under the title of The Civil Wars of Rome, because, although executed in a manner deserving the highest praise, they presented to English readers but a limited number of Plutarch’s biographies.  Mr. Clough says, justly, in his Preface, that his own work would not have been needed, had not Mr. Long confined his translations within so narrow a compass.]

[Footnote F:  “De tous les auteurs,” says the Baron de Grimm, “qui nous restent de l’antiquite, Plutarque est, sans contredit, celui qui a recueilli le plus de verites de fait et de speculation.  Ses oeuvres sont une mine inepuisable de lumieres et de connaissance; c’est vraiment l’encyclopedie des anciens.” Memoires Historiques, etc., I., 312.]

Nor is it merely the common mass of readers who have chosen Plutarch as their favorite ancient.  The list of great and famous men who have made him their companion is a long one.  Men of action and men of thought have taken equal satisfaction in his pages.  Petrarch, the first scholar of the Revival, held him in high esteem, and drew from him much of his uncommon learning.  Erasmus, the first scholar of the Reformation, made his writings a special study, and translated from the Greek a large portion of his Moral Works.