"[9]--a man who alone possessed
more real virtue than, in very corrupt times, needing a satirist like
him, will sometimes fall to the share of multitudes. In this history of
his life,[10] will be contained a large account of his writings, a
critique on the nature, force, and extent of his genius, exemplified
from these writings; and a vindication of his moral character,
exemplified by his more distinguished virtues,--his filial piety, his
disinterested friendships, his reverence for the constitution of his
country, his love and admiration of virtue, and (what was the necessary
effect) his hatred and contempt of vice, his extensive charity to the
indigent, his warm benevolence to mankind, his supreme veneration of the
Deity, and above all his sincere belief of Revelation. Nor shall his
faults be concealed. It is not for the interests of his virtues that
they should. Nor indeed could they be concealed, if we were so disposed,
for they shine through his virtues, no man being more a dupe to the
specious appearances of virtue in others.[11] In a word, I mean not to
be his panegyrist but his historian. And may I, when envy and calumny
have taken the same advantage of my absence (for, while I live, I will
freely trust it to my life to confute them) may I find a friend as
careful of my honest fame as I have been of his! Together with his
works, he hath bequeathed me his dunces. So that as the property is
transferred, I could wish they would now let his memory alone. The veil
which death draws over the good is so sacred, that to tear it, and with
sacrilegious hands, to throw dirt upon the shrine, gives scandal even to
barbarians. And though Rome permitted her slaves to calumniate her best
citizens on the day of triumph, yet the same petulancy at their funeral
would have been rewarded with execration and a gibbet.[12] The public
may be malicious; but is rarely vindictive or ungenerous. It would abhor
all insults, on a writer dead, though it had borne with the ribaldry, or
even set the ribalds on work, when he was alive. And in this there is no
great harm, for he must have a strange impotency of mind indeed whom
such miserable scribblers can disturb or ruffle. Of all that gross
Beotian phalanx who have written scurrilously against the editor, he
knows not so much as one whom a writer of reputation would not wish to
have his enemy, or whom a man of honour would not be ashamed to own for
his friend.[13] He is indeed but slightly conve