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Plutarch & the issue of character.

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From: New Criterion
Date: 20001201
Author:Kimball, Roger

What Histories can be found ... that please and instruct like the Lives of Plutarch? ... I am of the same Opinion with that Author, who said, that if he was constrained to fling all the Books of the Antients into the Sea, PLUTARCH should be the last drowned.

--Montesquieu, quoted by Oliver Goldsmith

Using history as a mirror I try by whatever means I can to improve my own life and to model it by the standard of all that is best in those whose lives I write. As a result I feel as though I were conversing and indeed living with them; by means of history I receive each one of ...

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