The History of Rome: Reprinted Entire From the Last London Ed

Excerpt from The History of Rome: Reprinted Entire From the Last London Ed

In attempting to write the History of Rome, I am not afraid of incurring the censure pronounced by Johnson upon Blackwell, that he had chosen a subject long since exhausted; of which all men knew already as much as any one could tell them. Much more do I dread the reproach of having ventured, with most insufficient means, upon a work of the greatest difficulty; and thus by possibility deterring others from accomplishing a task which has never yet been fulfilled, and which they might fulfil more worthily. The great advances made within the last thirty years in historical knowledge have this most hopeful symptom, that they have taught us to appreciate the amount of our actual ignorance. As we have better understood what history ought to be, we are become ashamed of that scanty information which might once have passed for learning; and Our discovery of the questions which need to be solved has so outrun our powers of solving them, that we stand humiliated rather than encouraged, and almost inclined to envy the condition of our fathers, whose maps, so to speak, appeared to them complete and satisfactory, because they never suspected the existence of a world beyond their range.

Still, although the time will, I trust, arrive, when points now altogether obscure will receive their full illustration, and when this work must be superseded by a more perfect history, yet it may be possible in the mean while to render some service, if I shall be able to do any justice to my subject up to the extent of our present knowledge. And we, who are now in the vigor of life, possess at least one advantage which our children may not share equally. We have lived in a period rich in historical lessons beyond all former example; we have witnessed one of the great seasons of movement in the life of mankind, in which the arts of peace and war, political parties and principles, philosophy and religion, in all their manifold forms and influences, have been developed with extraordinary force and freedom.

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