What a school of private and public virtue had been opened to us at the resurrection of learning,if the latter historians of the Roman commonwealth,and the first of the succeeding monarchy,had come down to us entire?The few that are come down,though broken and imperfect,compose the best body of history that we have,nay the only body of ancient history that deserves to be an object of study.It fails us indeed most at that remarkable and fatal period,where our reasonable curiosity is raised the highest.Livy employed five and forty books to bring his history down to the end of the sixth century,and the breaking out of the third Punic war:but he employed ninety-five to bring it down from thence to the death of Drusus;that is,through the course of one hundred and twenty or thirty years.Apian,Dion Cassius,and others,nay even Plutarch included,make us but poor amends for what is lost of Livy.Among all the adventitious helps by which we endeavor to supply this loss in some degree,the best are those which we find scattered up and down in the works of Tully.His orations,particularly,and his letters,contain many curious anecdotes and instructive reflections,concerning the intrigues and machinations that were carried on against liberty,from Catiline's conspiracy to Caesar's.The state of the government,the constitution and temper of the several parties,and the characters of the principal persons who figured at that time on the public stage,are to be seen there in a stronger and truer light than they would have appeared perhaps if he had written purposely on this subject,and even in those memorials which he somewhere promises Atticus to write."Excudam aliquod Heraclidium opus,quod lateat in thesauris tuis".He would hardly have unmasked in such a work,as freely as in familiar occasional letters,Pompey,Cato,Brutus,nay himself;the four men of Rome,on whose praises he dwelt with the greatest complacency.
The age in which Livy flourished abounded with such materials as these:they were fresh,they were authentic;it was easy to procure them,it was safe to employ them.How he did employ them in executing the second part of his design,we may judge by his execution of the first:and,I own to your lordship,I should be glad to exchange,if it were possible,what we have of this history for what we have not.Would you not be glad,my lord,to see,in one stupendous draught,the whole progress of that government from liberty to servitude?
the whole series of causes and effects,apparent and real,public and private?
those which all men saw,and all good men lamented and opposed at the time;and those which were so disguised to the prejudices,to the partialities of a divided people,and even to the corruption of mankind,that many did not,and that many could pretend they did not,discern them,till it was too late to resist them?I am sorry to say it,this part of the Roman story would be not only more curious and more authentic than the former,but of more immediate and more important application to the present state of Britain.
But it is lost:the loss is irreparable,and your lordship will not blame me for deploring it.
III.They who set up for scepticism may not regret the loss of such a history:but this I will be bold to assert to them,that a history must be written on this plan,and must aim at least at these perfections,or it will answer sufficiently none of the intentions of history.That it will not answer sufficiently the intention I have insisted upon in these letters,that of instructing posterity by the example of former ages,is manifest:and I think it is as manifest,that a history cannot be said even to relate faithfully,and inform us truly that does not relate fully,and inform us of all that is necessary to make a true judgment concerning the matters contained in it.Naked facts,without the causes that produced them,and the circumstances that accompanied them,are not sufficient to characterise actions or counsels.
