02899cam a22003133u 4500 76952 UtSlPG 20260610134800.0 m cr n 260607r2025||||utu|||||o|||||||||||||| d UtSlPG en iso639-1 PR Dryden, John, 1631-1700 The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 17 Salt Lake City, UT : Project Gutenberg, 2025 1 online resource : multiple file formats text txt rdacontent computer c rdamedia online resource cr rdacarrier Release date is 2025-09-29 Jonathan Ingram and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net "The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 17." by John Dryden is a collection of literary translations, criticism, and polemical prose written in the late 17th century. This volume gathers his Life of Plutarch with a grand dedication to the Duke of Ormond, a specimen from his translation of the History of the League, a theological exchange with Edward Stillingfleet, and his English version of Du Fresnoy’s The Art of Painting alongside a celebrated parallel between poetry and painting. It showcases the author as biographer, translator, critic, and royalist controversialist. Expect erudite classical scholarship, vigorous prose, and wide-ranging reflections on history, art, politics, and religion. The opening of the volume frames the context of the 1680s English Plutarch with an editor’s note and a bookseller’s advertisement, then unveils a lofty dedication to the Duke of Ormond. In that dedication, the writer contrasts ancient greatness with modern decline, praises Ormond’s fidelity and governance of Ireland, castigates sectaries, republicans, and inconstant ex-royalists, and defends honest history against bigotry and partisan fabrication. It then proceeds to the Life of Plutarch, sketching his birth at Chæronea, family and teacher Ammonius, the humane cast of Greek education, his travels and relentless collection of sources, and his temperate, sociable character. The narrative outlines his Platonic-leaning philosophy, his ideas on oracles and intermediary spirits, his marriage to Timoxena and children, his Roman connections (notably Sossius Senecio and Trajan), and his likely public employments. It closes this opening stretch by weighing the uses and kinds of history—annals, history proper, and biography—and arguing for the special force and instruction found in lives. (This is an automatically generated summary.) Original publication data not identified English literature Scott, Walter, 1771-1832 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76952 117677 117677