THE LETTERS OF PLINY.

BOOK SEVENTH.

LETTER I.

TO RESTITUTUS.

THIS obstinate distemper which hangs upon you greatly alarms me; and though I know how extremely temperate you are, yet I am afraid your disease should get the better of your moderation. Let me entreat you, then, to resist it with a determined abstemiousness; a remedy, be assured, of all others the most laudable, as well as the most salutary. There is nothing impracticable in what I recommend; it is a rule, at least, which I always enjoin my family to observe with respect to myself. I tell them, should I be attacked with any disorder, I hope that I shall desire nothing of which I ought either to be ashamed, or have reason to repent: However, if my distemper should prevail over my judgment, I forbid them to give me any thing but by the consent of my physicians; and I assure the people about me, that I shall resent their compliance with me in things improper, as much as another man would their refusal. I had once a most violent fever: when the fit was a little abated, and

I had been anointed,* my physician offered me something to drink; I desired he would first feel my pulse, and, upon his seeming to think the paroxysm was not quite abated, I instantly returned the cup, though it was just at my lips. Afterwards, when I was preparing to go into the bath, twenty days from the first attack of my illness, perceiving the physicians whispering together, I enquired what they were saying? They replied, they were of opinion I might possibly bathe with safety; nevertheless, that they were not without some suspicion of hazard. What occasion then is there, said I, of bathing at all? And thus, with great complacency, I gavé up a pleasure I was upon the point of enjoying, and abstained from the bath with the same satisfaction I was preparing to enter it. I mention this, not only in order to enforce my advice by example, but also that this letter may be a sort of tie upon me, to observe the same resolute abstinence for the future. Farewell.

LETTER II.

TO JUSTUS.

ARE you not inconsistent, when you assure me you have no intermission from business, and yet

* Unction was much esteemed, as a remedy in certain cases, by the ancient physicians. Celsus, who flourished, it is supposed, about Pliny's time, expressly recommends it in the remission of acute distempers: "Ungi leniterque pertractari corpus, etiam in acutis et recentibus morbis oportet; in remissione tamen,” &e.— CELSI Med. ed. Almeloveen, p. 88.

express, at the same time, an earnest desire to see my works, upon which even the idle will scarce bestow some of their useless hours? I will not, then, break in upon your occupations during this summer season; but when the return of winter shall make it probable, that your evenings, at least, may be disengaged, I will look over my trifles for something to amuse your vacant hours. In the mean while, I shall be well satisfied if my letters should not prove troublesome, as I suspect they are, and therefore shorten them. Farewell.

LETTER III.

TO PRÆSENS.

ARE you determined, then, to pass your whole time between Lucania* and Campania ?† Your answer, I suppose, will be, that the former is your native country, and the latter that of your wife. This, I admit, may justify a long absence; but I cannot allow it as a reason for a perpetual one. But are you resolved, in good earnest, never to return to Rome; that theatre of honours, preferment, and amicable connections of every sort? Are you obstinately determined to live your own master, to sleep as long as you please, and to rise when you think proper? Will you never change your country garb for the dress of the town, but spend your whole days unembarrassed by our crowded streets? It is

Comprehending the Basilicata, a province in the kingdom of

Naples.

Now called Campagna di Roma.-Sec Book VI. Let. 4. note.

time, however, you should revisit this our scene of hurry, were it only that your rural pleasures may not grow languid by uninterrupted possession: appear at the levees of the great, that you may enjoy the same honour yourself with more satisfaction; and mix in our crowds, that you may have a keener relish for the charms of solitude. But am I not imprudently retarding the friend I would recal? It is these very circumstances, perhaps, that induce you every day more and more to wrap yourself up in retirement. All, however, I wish to prevail with you, is only to intermit, not to renounce, the charms of solitude. If I were to invite you to a feast, as I would blend dishes of a poignant taste with those of the luscious kind, in order to sharpen the edge of your palate by the one, which had been flattened by the other; so I now advise you to enliven, sometimes, the smooth pleasures of life, with those of a more active nature. Farewell.

LETTER IV.

TO PONTIUS.

and are

YOU have read, it seems, my poems, desirous to know how it happened that a man of my gravity (as you are pleased to call me, though, in truth, I am only not a trifler,) could adopt this mode of composition. To take the account, then, a good way back, I must acquaint you, that I had always an inclination to poetry, insomuch that, when I was fourteen years of age, I composed a tragedy in Greek. If you should ask me what sort of one? I