excelled in all arts and sciences, philosophers that carried their
inquiries as far as was possible in those early ages, and who have left us
such maxims of morality, as might put many Christians to the blush.

If the virtues of those who are celebrated in history may serve us for
models in the conduct of our lives; their vices and failings, on the other
hand, are no less proper to caution and instruct us; and the strict regard
which an historian is obliged to pay to truth will not allow him to
dissemble the latter, through fear of eclipsing the lustre of the former.
Nor does what I here advance contradict the rule laid down by Plutarch, on
the same subject, in his preface to the life of _Cimon_.(223) He requires,
that the illustrious actions of great men be represented in their full
light; but as to the faults, which may sometimes escape them through
passion or surprise, or into which they may be drawn by the necessity of
affairs, considering them rather as a certain degree of perfection wanting
to their virtue,(224) than as vices or crimes that proceed from any
corruption of the heart; such imperfections as these, he would have the
historian, out of compassion to the weakness of human nature, which
produces nothing entirely perfect, content himself with touching very
lightly; in the same manner as an able painter, when he has a fine face to
draw, in which he finds some little blemish or defect, does neither
entirely suppress it, nor think himself obliged to represent it with a
strict exactness, because the one would spoil the beauty of the picture,
and the other would destroy the likeness. The very comparison Plutarch
uses, shows, that he speaks only of slight and excusable faults. But as to
actions of injustice, violence, and brutality, they ought not to be
concealed or disguised on any pretence; nor can we suppose, that the same
privilege should be allowed in history as is in painting, which invented
the profile, to represent the side-face of a prince who had lost an eye,
and by that means ingeniously concealed so disagreeable a deformity.(225)
History, the most essential rule of which is sincerity, will by no means
admit of such indulgences, as indeed would deprive it of its greatest
advantage.

Shame, reproach, infamy, hatred, and the execrations of the public, which
are the inseparable attendants on criminal and brutal actions, are no less
proper to excite a horror for vice, than the glory, which perpetually
atte