THE PREFACE. PLINY may be considered in these Letters as writing his own memoirs; every epistle is a kind of historical sketch, wherein we have a view of him in some striking attitude, either of active or contemplative life. And if that were his real design in their publication, he could not, it should seem, have taken a more agreeable, or, perhaps, a more modest method of transmitting himself to posterity. To enter, therefore, into a detail concerning him, would be only anticipating the author himself, and amusing the reader with a copy, while the original stands before him. Nothing seems requisite to be farther added to the piece, than just to mark the date. PLINY was born in the reign of NERO, |