The Letters of Pliny the Younger, vol 1 | Page 8

justly and honourably with all men. We have called him vain, and vain he undoubtedly was to an extraordinary degree. But Pliny's vanity is never offensive. The very naivete with which he acknowledges his failing disarms all criticism and merely renders it amusing. Indeed, it is doubtful whether he would have admitted that it was a failing at all, inasmuch as it was his love of praise which spurred him on to literary endeavour. The Romans, in their grand manner, affected a certain magniloquence which is alien to the Anglo-Saxon cast of thought, and if Horace could declare of his own odes that he had erected a monument more durable than brass, Pliny, who always had the great masters before him, naturally fell into the same rather vainglorious train of thought. His frankest confession is to be found in a letter to Titinius Capito, who had urged him to write history, when he says: "Me autem nihil aeque ac diuturnitatis amor et cupido sollicitat, res homine dignissima, eo presertime qui nullius sibi conscius culpae posteritatis memoriam non reformidet." Or again, he admits that he is not Stoic enough to be merely content with the consciousness of having done his duty. He craves for a public testimony thereto, a little applause from the bystanders, a vote of thanks from those whom he has benefited. Most of us desire the same--the difference is that Pliny does not mind owning up to it. But this vanity of his peeps out in curious places. When we find him speaking of a young Roman of fashion standing for hours in a crowd to listen to his pleading in the courts, or of his audience pressing him not to omit a single line of his poems, or of the deferential way in which certain young barristers of promise hang on his lips, copy his gestures and bow to his judgment, one cannot resist a smile. When he tells us that he went on calmly reading and taking notes during the eruption of Vesuvius, though the hot ashes were threatening to overwhelm the villa in which he was staying, or when he quotes the really execrable verses which some scribbler of the day composed in his honour, with the most exquisite self-complacency, one is tempted to show a little impatience at such extravagant self-satisfaction. Tacitus again--that supreme master of irony--must have occasionally curled his thin lip on reading some of the epistles which were addressed to him by his friend Pliny. It is a tribute to Pliny's powers of literary discernment that he appreciated the marvellous ability of Tacitus, though had he failed to do so, we should have rated him for his blindness. No cultured Roman could fail to see that Tacitus had brought a new literary style to a pitch of the highest perfection, and his fame throughout his lifetime was enormous. So apparently was Pliny's, and the latter boasts that their names are mentioned together in everyday conversation, and in the last wills and testaments of people with literary taste. Tacitus one day was sitting at the games, and got into conversation with a stranger sitting in the next seat. It took a literary turn, and the stranger was delighted with the learning that Tacitus displayed. "Are you a Roman, or from the country" said he. "You know me quite well," answered Tacitus, "from the books you have studied." "Then," rejoined the stranger, "you must be either Tacitus or Pliny." It was Tacitus himself who told Pliny the story, and one can imagine how it would delight him. He promptly sits down and tells it to his friend Maximus, and adds another story of a similar character. But the most extraordinary passage of all occurs in a letter (vii. 20) to Tacitus himself. In it Pliny says that when he was a young man and Tacitus was already famous, he determined to make him his model. There were, he said, many brilliant geniuses, but you--such was the affinity of our natures--seemed to me to be the most easy to imitate, and the most worthy of imitation. Maxime imitabilis, maxime imitandus videbaris. Unconscious conceit could go no farther!
And yet one can pardon this egregious vanity when one thinks of Pliny's other qualities. Who else is there in Roman literature who so thoroughly corresponds with our modern ideal of a rich, generous, cultured public servant? In one place we find him providing for the educational needs of his birthplace, Comum. In another he renounces his share of an inheritance, and bestows it upon his old township. Or he buys a statue for a temple, finds the money for a new shrine, pays the debts of an acquaintance, gives a friend's daughter a handsome dowry, opens his purse and enables another deserving friend to acquire the status