From the time of its first publication, for more
than a hundred years, it was one of the most popular books of the
period, as was proved by the appearance of six successive editions in
folio.[D] Some of these clumsy volumes may, no doubt, have been put
to uses as ignoble as that which Chrysale, in "Les Femmes Savantes,"
suggests for his sister's similar copy of Amyot:--
"Vos livres eternels ne me contentent pas;
Et, hors un gros Plutarque a mettre mes rabats,
Vous devriez bruler tout ce meuble inutile";--
but duller books of the same size, of which there were many in those
days of patient readers, would have had an equal value for such
economical purposes as this, and "The Lives of the Noble Grecians and
Romans by that Grave Learned Philosopher & Historiographer Plutarch"
were too entertaining to young and old to be left for any length of time
quietly upon the shelf. They were the familiar reading of boys who
were to become the actors in the great drama of the Rebellion and the
Commonwealth, or who a little later were to frequent the dissolute court
of Charles, presenting in their own lives, whether in camp or court, as
patriots or as traitors, parallels to those which they had read in the
weighty pages of the old biographer.
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