IN availing myself of Your Lordship's permission to inscribe to you the following volumes, I shall not offend your modesty by any attempt to proclaim to the world, what the world every where acknowledges, Your Lordship's eminent virtues. I shall be content if I can hide some part of my own deficiency in the splendor of so great and good a name.

Your Lordship is well acquainted with the originals, from which the following Translation is drawn. But while all fami

liar letters must be liable to obscurity in proportion to our ignorance of the persons and circumstances, often of little notoriety, to which they allude; much more is it to be expected, that in a correspondence entertained at so remote a period, where there exist no remains of the letters on one side, and not unfrequently no record of the particulars which form their subject, many difficulties should present themselves, independent of those which are inseparable from customs and language long since gone into disuse. It is therefore no idle task to render documents, at once so curious and instructive, more extensively useful, by making them more generally understood. For whether we consider the matter, or the manner, of these letters, their author, or the time when they were written; they constitute in every point of view one of the most precious remains of antiquity. Cicero, as your Lordship knows, was not only the greatest orator of Rome; he was at the same time one of her wisest counsellors,

and one of her best citizens. To good natural parts he had added incredible industry, and had made himself master of all the literature and philosophy of the Greeks, then considered as the only source, and, exclusively of revelation, still the brightest source of good taste and right judgment. But while the learning of the Greek sophist was often suffered to waste itself in fruitless speculation, or self conceit; Cicero's on the contrary, appears to have been constantly directed to the purposes of useful life, adding strength and grace to the manly powers of his mind. It regulated his judgment, and animated his exertions, in the Forum, and in the Senate, in the various and important offices which he executed with singular diligence in the Republic, and likewise in the discharge of those gentler duties of courtesy and friendship, to which he seems never to have been inattentive. For so occupied was his whole life, that it may well excite our wonder how he found time to write, or to read,

even a portion of those works which he composed and studied. His conduct in the height of his power, during his Consulship, is universally known, as well from contemporary histories, as from his own orations, which yet remain an illustrious monument of his prudence, of his diligence, of his eloquence. His administration of a provincial government is not less distinguished, and is collected chiefly from the evidence of these letters. It appears to have been every way judicious, and upright, and worthy of his high character. For in a situation, where other governors, removed from the danger of immediate observation, and unrestrained by the sanctions of a pure religion, had too generally given a loose to rapine, extortion, and violence; and had sacrificed honor, conscience, duty, every ornament, and every virtue, at the shrine of ambition and avarice; Cicero stands almost a single instance of unshaken justice, patriotism, and moral excellence.

But it would be tedious, and impertinent