great and eminent men, so the lives of such may be justly and
properly styled the quintessence of history. In these, when
delivered to us by sensible writers, we are not only most
agreeably entertained, but most usefully instructed; for, besides
the attaining hence a consummate knowledge of human nature in
general; of its secret springs, various windings, and perplexed
mazes; we have here before our eyes lively examples of whatever is
amiable or detestable, worthy of admiration or abhorrence, and are
consequently taught, in a manner infinitely more effectual than by
precept, what we are eagerly to imitate or carefully to avoid.

But besides the two obvious advantages of surveying, as it were in
a picture, the true beauty of virtue and deformity of vice, we may
moreover learn from Plutarch, Nepos, Suetonius, and other
biographers, this useful lesson, not too hastily, nor in the
gross, to bestow either our praise or censure; since we shall
often find such a mixture of good and evil in the same character
that it may require a very accurate judgment and a very elaborate
inquiry to determine on which side the balance turns, for though
we sometimes meet with an Aristides or a Brutus, a Lysander or a
Nero, yet far the greater number are of the mixt kind, neither
totally good nor bad; their greatest virtues being obscured and
allayed by their vices, and those again softened and coloured over
by their virtues.

Of this kind was the illustrious person whose history we now
undertake; to whom, though nature had given the greatest and most
shining endowments, she had not given them absolutely pure and
without allay. Though he had much of the admirable in his
character, as much perhaps as is usually to be found in a hero, I