Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/14

 often referred to the progress he was making with the work. The 'mechanic exercise', the application it demanded, and the precepts and spirit of the text (with which he was deeply imbued, though I do not think that he was altogether a Stoic), evidently helped him to go through difficult times with equanimity. But his letters revealed also two sources of anxiety: a sense that he had performed his task inadequately, and a gradually increasing fear that he would not live to see it finished. I tried to persuade him that his dissatisfaction with his work was due rather to a habit of self-depreciation, which indeed with him had become a second nature, than to a perception of actual shortcomings in it; and when he spoke of his death I could only assure him that if the need arose I would see his book through the press, as he had entreated me to do.

That promise is now fulfilled, though circumstances have allowed me to perform myself only a very little of the labour involved. Mr. David Rees, Postmaster of Merton College, sitting in Farquharson's study and working with his papers and his books with only slight collaboration on my part, attended, with infinite patience and the most scrupulous care, to the passing for press of the first proofs of pp. 718–902 and the revises of pp. 609–902, and of the first proofs and revises of the Introduction. The Indexes are entirely his work.

The rule observed in carrying out our task was to leave unaltered everything except false references and slips which were manifestly due to an oversight. Disagreement with a comment or preference for another mode of expression, even if there seemed a valid reason for it, was never treated as justifying an alteration. Our aim has been to give what Farquharson really meant to print at the time when he completed his MS. The perfect vi