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He praises very highly such sententiae as "Virtue keeps its luster untarnished," and "know thyself." Indeed, the moral value of such precepts weighed so heavily with Plutarch that he advocated emending the poets to bring them in more strict accord with the ethics of the Stoic philosophy.
In 1513 he writes to Ammonius: 'My enthusiasm for emending and annotating Jerome is such that I feel as though inspired by some god. I have almost completely emended him already by collating many old manuscripts. And this I do at incredibly great expense. In 1512 he negotiated with Badius about an edition of the letters.
It will never be seen or read or known at all. It has utterly disappeared nor is it even preserved in any human memory no, not in my own. I kept it for a year, closely filing, polishing, and emending it until one would have thought it final, and even then I continued to develop and to mould it. It grew like a young tree in the corner of a fruitful field and gave an enduring pleasure.
Seeing it hath pleased GOD to make such a bountiful provision for His Church in general, what need we be solicitous about the emending the low condition of many of the Clergy, when as there is such a plain remedy at hand, had we but grace to apply it?" This invention pleases some mainly well. But, art thou in good earnest? my excellent Contriver!
And as if the simple monastic folk of modern times were deceived by a confusion of names, while Liber Pater is preferred to Liber Patrum, the study of the monks nowadays is in the emptying of cups and not the emending of books; to which they do not hesitate to add the wanton music of Timotheus, jealous of chastity, and thus the song of the merry-maker and not the chant of the mourner is become the office of the monks.
His brush-strokes are very few in number, but each one tells. They are laid on with a touch which is little short of marvelous, and requires heredity to explain its skill. For in his method there is no emending, no super-position, no change possible. What he does is done once and for all. The force of it grows on you as you gaze. Each stroke expresses surprisingly much, and suggests more.
This view is well exemplified in the quotations from Aristophanes, Xenophon, Strabo, and especially Plutarch. But even Plutarch, who goes so far as to suggest emending the poets to make their effect more moral, does not suggest that the purpose of poetry is to afford moral instruction. He distinguishes; some poetry is distinctly immoral and should be enjoyed only for its art.
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