With him mythological traditions appear to have almost the same authority as modern discoveries. The earth teems with monsters, not miracles, or exceptions to the regular order of nature, but specimens of her ingenuity. In his theory of the universe he assumes such causes and principles as lead him to admit, without question, the existence of prodigies, however impossible they may be. They are wonderful because unusual; but they are effects which might result from the natural causes which he believed to be in operation. His theory, that Nature acted not only by regular laws but often by actual interferences, (for this was the character of his pantheism, ii. 5, 7,)—his belief that the various germs of created things were scattered in profusion throughout the universe, and accidentally mingling in confusion produced monstrous forms, (3)—prepared him to consider nothing incredible (xi. 3;) and his temper inclined him to go further, and to admit almost every thing which was credible as true.[[1276]]
Deficient as the work is in scientific value and philosophical arrangement, the author evidently wished to stamp it with a character of practical utility. It is an encyclopædia of the knowledge which could be brought together from different sources; and for such a work there are two important requisites—facility of reference, and the citation of authorities. With this view the whole is preceded by a summary, and to each book is added a table of contents, together with the names of authors to whom he is indebted.
The work commences with the theory of the universe;[[1277]] the history and science of astronomy; meteorological phenomena; and the geological changes which have taken place on the earth by volcanic and aqueous action. Geography, both physical and political, occupy the four next books.[[1278]] Here truth and error are mingled in dire confusion. Accounts which are based solely on the traditions of remote antiquity are given side by side with the results of modern investigation, and yet no distinction is drawn as to authenticity; and, owing to his confusing together such different accounts, measurements and distances are generally wrong.
But in the zoological division of the work, which next follows,[[1279]] he gives unrestrained scope to his credulity and love of the marvellous. He tells of men whose feet were turned backwards; of others whose feet were so large as to shade them when they lay in the sun. He describes beings in whom both sexes were united; others in whom a change of sex had taken place; others without mouths, who fed on the fragrance of fruits and flowers.[[1280]] Such are some of the marvels of the human race recorded by him. Amongst the lower animals he enumerates horned horses furnished with wings;[[1281]] the Mantichora, with the face of a man, three rows of teeth, a lion’s body, and a scorpion’s tail;[[1282]] the unicorn with a stag’s head, a horse’s body, the feet of an elephant, and the tail of a boar;[[1283]] the basilisk, whose very glance is fatal. The seas are peopled not only with sea-goats and sea-elephants, but with real Nereids and Tritons.[[1284]] Mice, according to his account, produce their young by licking each other; and fire produces an insect (pyralis) which cannot live except in the midst of the flames.
Sixteen books[[1285]] are devoted to botany, both general and medical; and the medicinal properties of the human frame, and of other animal substances, as well as of different waters, are next discussed.[[1286]] An account of minerals and metals concludes the work; and this portion embraces an account of their various uses in the fine arts, intermingled with interesting anecdotes and histories of art and artists. This is the most valuable as well as the most pleasing section of the work.
He was pre-eminently a collector of stories and anecdotes and supposed facts, and he was only accidentally a naturalist, because natural history furnished the most extensive variety of marvellous and curious materials. The naturalist, Cuvier,[[1287]] observed his want of judgment, his credulity, his defective arrangement, and the inappropriate nature of his observations. Notwithstanding all these faults this elaborate work contains many valuable truths, much entertaining information, and the style in which it is written is, when not too florid, full of vigour and expression. The philosophical belief can scarcely be considered that of any particular school, although tinctured by the prevalent Stoicism of the day; but its pervading character is querulous and melancholy. Believing that nature is an all-powerful principle, and the world or universe itself, instinct with Deity, he saw more of evil than of good in the Divine dispensations; and the result was a gloomy and discontented pantheism.
Pliny the Younger (BORN A. D. 61.)
C. Plinius Cæcilius Secundus was sister’s son to the elder Pliny. Most of the information which we possess respecting his life and character is derived from his letters. He was born at Novo-Comum, on the Lake Larius (Como;) and as he was in his eighteenth year[[1288]] at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius, which took place A. D. 79, the date of his birth must have been A. D. 61.
On the death of his father, C. Cæcilius, he was adopted by his uncle, and therefore took the name of Plinius. He was educated under the guardianship of Virginius Rufus, who felt for him the affection of a parent. The regard was evidently mutual. “I loved him,” writes Pliny to Voconius,[[1289]] with that tenderness which so frequently adorns his letters, especially those to his wife Calphurnia, “as much as I admired him;” and he thus concludes his letter: “I had wished to write to you on many other subjects, but my thoughts are fully occupied on this one subject of contemplation. I see, I think of no one but Virginius. In fancy I seem to hear his voice, to address him, to hold him in my arms. We may perhaps have, and shall continue to have, men equal to him in virtue, but no one equal to him in glory.” In belles-lettres and eloquence[[1290]] he attended constantly the lectures of Quintilian and Nicetes Sacerdos, of whom favourable mention is made by Seneca.[[1291]]
Under the care of such tutors and such an uncle, his literary tastes were cultivated early, and before he had completed his fifteenth year he gave proof of his love of poetry, by writing what he modestly says was called a Greek tragedy. This taste for poetry remained to him in after life: once when weather-bound at the island of Icaria, he celebrated the event in an elegiac poem. He wrote hexameters, of which he gives a short specimen, and also a birth-day ode in hendecasyllables, and he tells us he wrote with quickness and facility.[[1292]]