nephew of the former, was born in the ninth year of Nero, and the 62d of Christ, at Novocomum, a town upon the lake Larius, near which he had several beautiful villas. Cæcilius was the name of his father, and Plinius Secundus that of his mother's brother, who adopted him. He brought into the world with him fine parts and an elegant taste, which he did not fail to cultivate early; for, as he tells us himself, he wrote a Greek tragedy at 14 years of age. He lost his father when he was young; and had the famous Virginius for his tutor or guardian, whom he has set in a glorious light. He frequented the schools of the rhetoricians, and heard Quintilian; for whom he ever after entertained so high an esteem, that he bestowed a considerable portion upon his daughter at her marriage. He was in his 18th year when his uncle died; and it was then that he began to plead in the forum, which was the usual road to dignities. About a year after, he assumed the military character, and went into Syria with the commission of tribune; but this did not suit his taste any more than it had done Tully's; and therefore we find him returning after a campaign or two. He tells us, that in his passage homewards he was detained by contrary winds at the island Icaria, and how he employed himself in making verses: he enlarges in the same place upon his poetical excursions; yet poetry was not the shining part of his character any more than it had been of Tully's.

Upon his return from Syria, he married a wife, and settled at Rome: it was in the reign of Domitian. During this most perilous time, he continued to plead in the forum, where he was not more distinguished by his uncommon abilities and eloquence, than by his great resolution and courage, which enabled him to speak boldly, when scarcely one else durst speak at all. On these accounts he was often singled out by the senate to defend the plundered provinces against their oppressive governors, and to manage other causes of a like important and dangerous nature. One of these was for the province of Baetica, in their prosecution of Baebius Massa; in which he acquired to general an applause, that the emperor Nerva, then a private man, and in banishment at Tarentum, wrote to him a letter, in which he congratulated not only Pliny, but the age which had produced an example so much in the spirit of the ancients. Pliny relates this affair in a letter to Cornelius Tacitus; and he was so pleased with it himself, that he could not help intreating this friend to record it in his history. He intreates him, however, with infinitely more modesty than Tully had intreated Luccius upon the same occasion: and though he might imitate Cicero in the request, as he professes to have constantly set that great man before him for a model, yet he took care not to transgress the bounds of decency in his manner of making it. He obtained the offices of quaestor and tribune, and luckily went unhurt through the reign of Domitian: there is, however, reason to suppose, if that emperor had not died just as he did, that Pliny would have shared the fate of many other great men; for he tells us himself, that his name was afterwards found in Domitian's tables, among the number of those who were destined to destruction.

He lost his wife in the beginning of Nerva's reign, and soon after married his beloved Calpurnia, of whom we read so much in his Epistles. He had not, however, any children by any of his wives: and hence we find him thanking Trajan for the jus trium liberorum, which he afterwards obtained of that emperor for his friend Suetonius Tranquillus. He hints also, in his letter of thanks to Trajan, that he had been twice married in the reign of Domitian. He was promoted to the consulship by Trajan in the year 100, when he was 38 years of age; and in this office pronounced that famous panegyric, which has ever since been admired, as well for the copiousness of the topics as the elegance of address. Then he was elected augur, and afterwards made proconsul of Bithynia; whence he wrote to Trajan that curious letter concerning the primitive Christians; which, with Trajan's rechrist, is happily extant among his Epistles. Pliny's letter, as Mr Melmoth observes in a note upon the passage, is esteemed as almost the only genuine monument of ecclesiastical antiquity relating to the times immediately succeeding the apostles, it being written at most not above 40 years after the death of St Paul. It was preferred by the Christians themselves, as a clear and unsuspicious evidence of the purity of their doctrines, and is frequently appealed to by the early writers of the church against the calumnies of their adversaries. It is not known what became of Pliny after his return from Bithynia; whether he lived at Rome, or what time he spent at his country houses. Antiquity is also silent as to the time of his death: but it is conjectured that he died either a little before or soon after that excellent prince, his admired Trajan; that is, about the year of Christ 116.

Pliny was one of the greatest wits, and one of the worthiest. worthiest men among the ancients. He had fine parts, which he cultivated to the utmost; and he accomplished himself with all the various kinds of knowledge which could serve to make him either useful or agreeable. He wrote and published a great number of things; but nothing has escaped the wreck of time except the books of Letters, and the panegyric upon Trajan. This has ever been considered as a masterpiece; and if he has, as some think, almost exhausted all the ideas of perfection in a prince, and gone perhaps a little beyond the truth, yet it is allowed that no panegyric was ever possessed of a finer subject, and on which he might better indulge in all the flow of eloquence, without incurring the suspicion of flattery and lies. His letters seem to have been intended for the public; and in them he may be considered as writing his own memoirs. Every epistle is a kind of historical sketch, wherein we have a view of him in some striking attitude either of active or contemplative life. In them are preferred anecdotes of many eminent persons, whose works have come down to us, as Suetonius, Silius Italicus, Martial, Tacitus, and Quintilian; and of curious things, which throw great light upon the history of those times. They are written with great politeness and spirit; and if they abound too much in turn and metaphor, we must impute it to that degeneracy of taste which was then accompanying the degenerate manners of Rome. Pliny, however, seems to have preserved himself in this latter respect from the general contagion: whatever the manners of the Romans were, his were pure and incorrupt. His writings breathe a spirit of transcendent goodness and humanity: his only imperfection is, he was too desirous that the public and posterity should know how humane and good he was. We have two elegant English translations of his Epistles; the one by Mr Melmoth, and the other by Lord Orrery.