collection of Letters may perhaps be acceptable to those who are
unfamiliar with the circumstances of the times in which he lived.
Moreover, few have studied the Letters themselves without feeling a warm
affection for the writer of them.  He discloses his character therein so
completely, and, in spite of his glaring fault of vanity and his endless
love of adulation, that character is in the main so charming, that one
can easily understand the high esteem in which Pliny was held by the
wide circle of his friends, by the Emperor Trajan, and by the public at
large.  The correspondence of Pliny the Younger depicts for us the
everyday life of a Roman gentleman in the best sense of the term.  We
see him practising at the Bar; we see him engaged in the civil
magistracies at Rome, and in the governorship of the important province
of Bithynia; we see him consulted by the Emperor on affairs of state,
and occupying a definite place among the "Amici Caesaris." Best of all,
perhaps, we see him in his daily life, a devoted scholar, never so happy
as when he is in his study, laboriously seeking to perfect his style,
whether in verse or prose, by the models of the great writers of the
past and the criticisms of the friends whom he has summoned, in a
friendly way, to hear his compositions read or recited.  Or again we
find him at one of his country villas, enjoying a well-earned leisure