The book
is interesting from Dryden's connection with it, but still more
so--considering how slight that connection was, his only contribution to
it being the Life of Plutarch--from the fact, that the translations of
some of the Lives were made by famous men, as that of Alcibiades by Lord
Chancellor Somers, and that of Alexander by the excellent John Evelyn;
while others were made by men who, if not famous, are at least well
remembered by the lovers of the literature of the time,--as that of
Numa by Sir Paul Rycaut, the Turkey merchant, and the continuer of Dr.
Johnson's favorite history of the Turks,--that of Otho by Pope's friend,
the medical poet, Dr. Garth,--that of Solon by Creech, the translator of
Lucretius,--that of Lysander by the Honorable Charles Boyle, whose name
is preserved in the alcohol of Bentley's classical satire,--and that of
Themistocles by Edward, the son of Sir Thomas Browne.
[Footnote A: For the sake of illustration of the care and labor given by
Mr. Clough to the revision, we open at random on the Life of Dion, Vol.
V., p. 291, and, comparing it with the original _Dryden_, we find, that
in ten pages, to the end of the Life, there are but three, and they
short sentences, in which changes of more or less consequence have not
been made.
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