And the works of both are for the most part cast in a biographic form, their most striking illustrations consisting in the exhibitions of character and experience which they contain.
Plutarch's 'Lives,' though written nearly eighteen hundred years ago, like Homer's 'Iliad,' still holds its ground as the greatest work of its kind.

It was the favourite book of Montaigne; and to Englishmen it possesses the special interest of having been Shakspeare's principal authority in his great classical dramas.

Montaigne pronounced Plutarch to be "the greatest master in that kind of writing"-- the biographic; and he declared that he "could no sooner cast an eye upon him but he purloined either a leg or a wing." Alfieri was first drawn with passion to literature by reading Plutarch.
"I read," said he, "the lives of Timoleon, Caesar, Brutus, Pelopidas, more than six times, with cries, with tears, and with such transports, that I was almost furious....

Every time that I met with one of the grand traits of these great men, I was seized with such vehement agitation as to be unable to sit still." Plutarch was also a favourite with persons of such various minds as Schiller and Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon and Madame Roland.

The latter was so fascinated by the book that she carried it to church with her in the guise of a missal, and read it surreptitiously during the service.
It has also been the nurture of heroic souls such as Henry IV.