Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/21

Rh one occasion he found fault with me for walking — "You might have avoided losing all those hours," said he; for he looked upon every moment as lost which was not devoted to study. It was by means of such unremitting industry as this that he completed so many works, and left me 160 volumes of notes', written extremely small on both sides, which in fact renders the collection doubly volumimous. He himself used to relate, that when he was procurator in Spain, he might have parted with his common-place book to Largius Licinius for 400,000 sesterces; and at that time the collection was not so extensive as afterwards. When you come to think of how much he must have read, of how much he has written, would you not really suppose that he had never been engaged in business, and had never enjoyed the favour of princes? And yet, on the other hand, when you hear what labour he expended upon his studies, does it not almost seem that he has neither written nor read enough? For, in fact, what pursuits are those that would not have been interrupted by occupations such as his? While, again, what is there that such unremitting perseverance as his could not have effected? I am in the habit, therefore, of laughing at it when people call me a studious man, — me who, in comparison with him, am a downright idler; and yet I devote to study as much time as my public engagements on the one hand, and my duties to my friends on the other, will admit of. Who is there, then, out of all those who have devoted their whole life to literature, that ought not, when put in comparison with him, to quite blush at a life that would almost appear to have been devoted to slothfulness and inactivity? But my letter has already exceeded its proper limits, for I had originally intended to write only upon the subject as to which you made inquiry, the books of his composition that he left. I trust, however, that these particulars will prove no less pleasing to you than the writings themselves; and that they will not only induce you to peruse them, but excite you, by a feeling of generous emulation, to produce some work of a similar nature. — Farewell."

Of all the works written by Pliny, one only, the ‘Historia Naturalis' has survived to our times. This work, however,