money, and his disposition was one of the kindest. He was always ready
to believe the best of any one, always prepared to do a friend a
service, devoted to his wife and her relations, and anxious to deal
justly and honourably with all men. We have called him vain, and vain
he undoubtedly was to an extraordinary degree. But Pliny's vanity is
never offensive. The very naivete with which he acknowledges his
failing disarms all criticism and merely renders it amusing. Indeed, it
is doubtful whether he would have admitted that it was a failing at all,
inasmuch as it was his love of praise which spurred him on to literary
endeavour. The Romans, in their grand manner, affected a certain
magniloquence which is alien to the Anglo-Saxon cast of thought, and if
Horace could declare of his own odes that he had erected a monument more
durable than brass, Pliny, who always had the great masters before him,
naturally fell into the same rather vainglorious train of thought. His
frankest confession is to be found in a letter to Titinius Capito, who
had urged him to write history, when he says: "Me autem nihil aeque ac
diuturnitatis amor et cupido sollicitat, res homine dignissima, eo
presertime qui nullius sibi conscius culpae posteritatis memoriam non
reformidet." Or again, he admits that he is not Stoic enough to be
merely content with the consciousness of having done his duty. He
craves for a public testimony thereto, a little applause from the
bystanders, a vote of thanks from those whom he has benefited. Most of
us desire the same--the difference is that Pliny does not mind owning up
to it. But this vanity of his peeps out in curious places. When we
find him speaking of a young Roman of fashion standing for hours in a
crowd to listen to his pleading in the courts, or of his audience
pressing him not to omit a single line of his poems, or of the
deferential way in which certain young barristers of promise hang on his
lips, copy his gestures and bow to his judgment, one cannot resist a
smile. When he tells us that he went on calmly reading and taking notes