ployed, to give it a second purgation. He succeeded as well, as it was possible for any man of the best judgement and learning to succeed, in an attempt of that nature. That is to say, he rectified a multitude of errors, and in many places endea youred to mend. the miserable language. Two of the Lives he translated anew; and this he executed in such a manner that, had he done the whole, the present translators would never have thought of the undertaking. But two Lives out of fifty made a yery small part of this great work; and though he rectified many mistakes in the old translation, yet where almost every thing was mistake, it is no wonder if many escaped him. This was, indeed, the case. In the course of our notes, we had remarked a great number; but, apprehensive that such a continual attention to the faults of a former translation might appear invidious, we expunged the chief part of the remarks, and suffered such only to remain, as might testify the propriety of our present undertaking*. Besides, though the ingenious reviser of the edition of 1758 might repair the language, where it was most palpably deficient, it was impossible for him to alter the cast and complexion of the whole. It would still retain it's inequalities, it's tameness, and it's heavy march; it's mixture of idioms, and the irksome train of far-connected periods. These it still retains;

Many of those likewise, as no longer necessary, are in this edition omitted. E.

and, after all the operations it has gone through, remains

Like some patch'd dog-hole, eked with ends of wall!

• In this view of things, the necessity of a new translation is obvious; and the hazard does not appear to be great. With such competitors for the public favour, the contest has neither glory nor danger attending it. But the labour and attention necessary, as well to secure as to obtain that favour, neither are nor ought to be less: and, with whatever success the present translators may be thought to have executed their undertaking, they will always at least have the merit of a diligent desire to discharge this public duty faithfully.

Where the text of Plutarch appeared to them erroneous, they have spared no pains, and neglected no means in their power, to rectify it,

Sensible that the principal art of a translator is to prevent the peculiarities of his author's language from stealing into his own, they have been particularly attentive to this point, and have generally endeavoured to keep their English unmixed with Greek. At the same time it must be observed, that there is frequently a great similarity in the structure of the two languages: yet that resemblance in some instances makes it the more necessary to guard against it on the whole. This care is of the greater consequence, because Plutarch's Lives generally pass through the hands of young

T

people, who ought to read their own language in it's native purity, unmixed and untainted with the idioms of different tongues. For their sakes too, as well as for the sake of readers of a different class, we have omitted some passages in the text, and have only signified the omission by asterisms*. Some, perhaps, may censure us for having taken too great a liberty with our author in this circumstance: however, we must beg leave in that instance to abide by our own opinion; and we are sure, that we should have censured no translator for the same. Could every thing of that kind have been omitted, we should have been still less dissatisfied: but sometimes the chain of the narrative would not admit of it, and the disagreeable parts were to be gotten over with as much decency as possible.

In the descriptions of battles, camps, and sieges, it is more than probable that we may sometimes have been mistaken in the military terms. We have endeavoured, however, to be as accurate in this respect as possible, and to acquaint ourselves with this kind of knowledge as well as our situations would permit; but we will not promise the reader, that we have always succeeded. Where something seemed to have fallen out of the text, or where the ellipsis was too violent for the forms

Some of these have been re-inserted by the present editor; in one instance particularly of a story twice told, which the Langhornes, by an oversight abundantly venial in so long a work, had admitted in one of the passages, and excluded in the other. E.

of our language, we have not scrupled to maintain the tenor of the narrative, or the chain of reason by such little insertions as appeared to be necessary for the purpose. These short insertions we at first put between hooks; but as that deformed the page, without answering any material purpose, we soon rejected it *.

Such are the liberties, which we have taken with Plutarch; and the learned, we flatter ourselves, will not think them too great. Yet there is one more which, if we could have presumed upon it, would have made his book infinitely more uniform and agreeable. We often wished to throw out of the text into the notes those tedious and digres sive comments, which spoil the beauty and order of his narrative, mortify the expectation, frequently when it is most essentially interested, and destroy the natural influence of his story by turning the attention into a different channel. What, for instance, can be more irksome and impertinent, than a long dissertation on a point of natural philosophy starting up at the very crisis of some important action? Every reader of Plutarch must have felt the pain of these unseasonable digressions; but, we could not, upon our own pleasure or authority, remove them.

* These have, in many cases, been replaced; in order to give the English reader, not only as nearly as practicable with propriety, "the whole truth," but also in as few instances as possible any thing but the truth.' E.

In the Notes, we have prosecuted these several intentions. We have endeavoured to bring the English reader acquainted with the Greek and Roman antiquities; where Plutarch had omitted any thing remarkable in the Lives, to supply it from other authors, and to make his book in some measure a general history of the periods under his

pen.

This part of our work is neither wholly borrowed, nor altogether original. Where Dacier or other annotators offered us any thing to the purpose, we have not scrupled to make use of it; and, to avoid the endless trouble of citations, we make this acknowledgement once for all. The number of original notes the learned reader will find to be very considerable: but there are not so many notes of any kind in the latter part of the work; because the manners and customs, the religious ceremonies, laws, state-offices, and forms of government, among the ancients, having been explained in the first Lives, much did not remain for the business of information.