If men of eminence are exposed to censure on one hand, they are as
much liable to flattery on the other. If they receive reproaches
which are not due to them, they likewise receive praises which they
do not deserve. In a word, the man in a high post is never regarded
with an indifferent eye, but always considered as a friend or an
enemy. For this reason persons in great stations have seldom their
true characters drawn till several years after their deaths. Their
personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they
were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues
can have justice done them. When writers have the least opportunity
of knowing the truth, they are in the best disposition to tell it.

It is therefore the privilege of posterity to adjust the characters
of illustrious persons, and to set matters right between those
antagonists who by their rivalry for greatness divided a whole age
into factions. We can now allow Caesar to be a great man, without
derogating from Pompey; and celebrate the virtues of Cato, without
detracting from those of Caesar. Every one that has been long dead
has a due proportion of praise allotted him, in which, whilst he
lived, his friends were too profuse, and his enemies too sparing.

According to Sir Isaac Newton's calculations, the last comet that
made its appearance, in 1680, imbibed so much heat by its approaches
to the sun, that it would have been two thousand times hotter than
red-hot iron, had it been a globe of that metal; and that supposing
it as big as the earth, and at the same distance from the sun, it
would be fifty thousand years in cooling, before it recovered its
natural temper. In the like manner, if an Englishman considers the
great ferment into which our political world is thrown at present,