Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/10

 2 DEMOSTHENES. that is industrious. I, for my part, shall desire that for any deficiency of mine in right judgment or action, 1 myself may be, as in fairness, held accountable, and shall not attribute it to the obscurity of my birthplace. But if any man undertake to write a history, that has to be collected from materials gathered by obsei'vation and the reading of works not easy to be got in all places, nor written always in his own language, but many of them foreign and dispersed in other hands, for him, un- doubtedly, it is in the first place and above all things most necessary, to reside in some city of good note, ad- dicted to liberal arts, and populous ; where he may have plenty of all sorts of books, and upon inquiry may hear and inform himself of such particulars as, having escaped the pens of writei's, are more faithfully preserved in the memories of men, lest his work be deficient in many things, even those which it can least dispense with. But for me, I live in a little town, where I am willing to continue, lest it should grow less ; and having had no leisure, while I was in Eome and other parts of Italy, to exercise myself in the Roman language, on account of public business and of those who came to be instructed by me in philosophy, it was very late, and in the decline of my age, before I applied myself to the reading of Latin authors. Upon which that which happened to me, may seem strange, though it be true ; for it was not so much by the knowledge of words, that I came to the under- standing of things, as by my experience of things I was enabled to follow the meaning of words. But to appre- ciate the graceful and ready pronunciation of the Eoman tongue, to understand the various figures and connection of words, and such other ornaments, in which the beauty of speaking consists, is, I doubt not, an admirable and delightful accomplishment; but it requires a degree of practice and study which is not easy, and will better suit