"Omnia Cum Possis Tanto Tam Clarus Amico,
Te Sensit Nemo Posse Nocere Tamen."
Many indeed remonstrate against my proceedings, and those
particularly who call themselves my friends insist that, in
consequence of my
Violent attachment to study, I pay no attention
to the concerns of the world, or to the interests of my family; and
that, on this account, I shall experience a delay in my promotion
to worldly dignities; that the influence of authors, both poets and
historians, has long since ceased; that the respect paid to
literature vanished with literary princes; and that in these
degenerate days very different paths lead to honours and opulence.
I allow all this, I readily allow it, and acquiesce in the truth.
For the unprincipled and covetous attach themselves to the court,
the churchmen to their books, and the ambitious to the public
offices, but as every man is under the influence of some darling
passion, so the love of letters and the study of eloquence have
from my infancy had for me peculiar charms of attraction. Impelled
by this thirst for knowledge, I have carried my researches into the
mysterious works of nature farther than the generality of my
contemporaries, and for the benefit of posterity have rescued from
oblivion the remarkable events of my own times. But this object
was not to be secured without an indefatigable, though at the same
time an agreeable, exertion; for an accurate investigation of every
particular is attended with much difficulty. It is difficult to
produce an orderly account of the investigation and discovery of
truth; it is difficult to preserve from the beginning to the end a
connected relation unbroken by irrelevant matter; and it is
difficult to render the narration no less elegant in the diction,
than instructive in its matter, for in prosecuting the series of
events, the choice of happy expressions is equally perplexing, as
the search after them painful.
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