Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Vol. 1 of 3
Here is no part'of history; which seems capable of yielding erther more instruction' or entertainment, than that which Offers to us the select lives Ofgreat and virtuous men, who have made an eminent figure on the public stage ofthe world. In these we see, at one view, what the annals ofawhole age can afford, that is worthy Of notice and, in the wide field of universal history, skipping as it were over the barren places, gather all its ?owers, and possess ourselves at once of every thing that is good in it.
But there is one great fault, which is commonly observed in the writers of particular lives; that they are apt to be partial and prejudiced in favor of their subject, and to give us a panegyric instead of a history. They work up their'characters as painters do their portraits; taking the praise Of theirart to consist, not in copying, but in adorning nature; not in drawingajust resemblance, but in givinga fine picture; or exalting the man into the hero: and this indeed seems to how, from the nature of the thing itself, where the very inclination to write, is generally grounded on prepossession, and an affection already contracted for the person, whose history we are attempting; and when we sit down to it with the disposition of a friend, it is natural for us to cast a shade over his failings -to give the strongest coloring to his virtues -and, out ofa good cha racter, to endeavour to draw a perfect one.
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