clear, and the words adequate to the subject. Nothing in the matter will be mistaken; nothing of the terms will be misapplied: all is natural and proper; and he who understands good sense and English, will be profited by the first, and delighted with the latter. This is what may be justly said in commendation of the translator, and without the note of flattery to a friend.

As for his author, I shall not be ashamed to copy from the learned Casaubon, who has translated him into Latin,* many things which I had not from my own small reading, and which I could not, without great difficulty, have drawn, but from his fountain; not omitting some which came casually in my way, by reading the preface of the Abbot Pichon to the Dauphin's Tacitus, an admirable and most useful work; which helps I ingenuously profess to have received from them, both to clear myself from being a plagiary of their writings, and to give authority, by their names, to the weakness of my own performance.

The taking of Constantinople, by Mahomet the Great, fell into the latter times of Pope Nicholas the Fifth,† a pope not only studious of good letters,

Mediterranean Sea and the Straits of Gibraltar;" the one published in 1698, the other in 1705. The naval and military professions were, however, formerly accounted less absolutely distinct branches of service than at present. Many officers distinguished themselves in both. Mr. Malone may therefore be right in conjecturing Sir Henry Shere to have been a soldier, though his studies would argue him a seaman or engineer.

* Polybii Lycorta F. Megalopolites Historiarum Libri, qui supersunt Gr. Lat. Isaacus Casaubonus, ex antiquis libris emendavit, Lat. vertit et commentariis illustravit. Accessit Enex vetustissimi Tactici commentarius de toleranda obsidione. Isaacus Casaubonus primus vulgavit, Latinam interpretationem ac notas adjecit. Parisiis, 1609, Folio.

"The fame of Nicholas the Fifth (who sat in the papal chair from 1447 to 1455) has not," says Mr. Gibbon,-Decline

and particularly of history, but also a great encourager of it in others. From the dreadful overthrow of that city, and final subversion of the

and Fall of the Roman Empire, vi. 429, 4to,-"been adequate to his merits. From a plebeian origin, he raised himself, by his virtue and learning. The character of the man prevailed over the interests of the pope; and he sharpened those weapons, which were soon pointed against the Roman church. He had been the friend of the most eminent scholars of the age; he became their patron; and such was the humility of his manners, that the change was scarcely discernible, either to them or to himself. If he pressed the acceptance of a liberal gift, it was not as the measure of desert, but as the proof of benevolence; and when modest merit declined his bounty, 'Accept it,' would he say, with a consciousness of his own worth; 'you will not always have a Nicholas among ye.' The influence of the holy see pervaded Christendom; and he exerted that influence in the search, not of benefices, but of books. From the ruins of the Byzantine libraries, from the darkest monasteries of Germany and Britain, he collected the dusty manuscripts of the writers of antiquity; and wherever the original could not be removed, a faithful copy was transcribed, and transmitted for his use. The Vatican, the old repository for bulls and legends, for superstition and forgery, was daily replenished with more precious furniture; and such was the industry of Nicholas, that, in a reign of eight years, he formed a library of five thousand volumes. To his munificence, the Latin world was indebted for the versions of Xenophon, Diodorus, Polybius, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Appian; of Strabo's Geography; of the Iliad; of the most valuable works of Plato and Aristotle; of Ptolemy and Theophrastus; and of the fathers of the Greek church. The example of the Roman pontiff was preceded, or imitated, by a Florentine merchant, who governed the republie without arms, and without a title. Cosmo, of Medicis, was the father of a line of princes, whose name and age are almost synonymous with the restoration of learning. His credit was ennobled into fame; his riches were dedicated to the service of mankind; he corresponded at once with Cairo and London, and a cargo of Indian spices and Greek books was imported in the same vessel. The genius and education of his grandson, Lorenzo, rendered him not only a patron, but a judge and candidate in the literary race. In his palace, distress was entitled to relief, and merit to reward. His leisure hours were delightfully spent in the Platonic academy; he encouraged the

Greek empire, many learned men escaped, and brought over with them into Italy that treasure of ancient authors,* which, by their unhappiness, we now possess; and, amongst the rest, some of these emulation of Demetrius Chalcocondyles and Angelo Politian; and his active missionary, Janus Lascaris, returned from the East with a treasure of two hundred manuscripts, fourscore of which were as yet unknown in the libraries of Europe. The rest of Italy was animated by a similar spirit, and the progress of the nation repaid the liberality of the princes. The Latins held the exclusive property of their own literature; and these disciples of Greece were soon capable of transmitting and improving the lessons which they had imbibed. After a short succession of foreign teachers, the tide of emigration subsided; but the language of Constantinople was spread beyond the Alps; and the natives of France, Germany, and England, imparted to their country the sacred fire which they had kindled in the schools of Florence and Rome."

*Our author recollected the following panegyric on Pope Nicholas, in the Dedication of Casaubon's edition of Polybius, to Henry IV. of France :

"Quum enim a pluribus retro sæculis, in principum animis, toto Occidente, amor politioris literaturæ et Græci sermonis excoluisset; accidit non sine numine profecto, ut circa illa ipsa tempora Byzantinæ cladis, et paullo ante, summi in Europa viri et principes generossissimi hunc veternum ceu virgula divina tacti, opportune excuterent, et ad bene merendum de studiis politioribus et de linguis, ardore incredibili accenderentur. Prima terrarum Italia ad hanc palmam occupandam, è diuturno torpore tunc demum expergefacta, sese concitavit, et nationibus aliis per Europam, exemplum quod imitarentur præbuit. In ipsa verò Italia, ad certamen adeo gloriosum, Nicolaus Quintus Pontifex Maximus, in cujus extrema tempora Byzantini imperii eversio incidit, princeps, quod equidem sciam, signum sustulit. Nam et literarum dicitur fuisse intelligentissimus; et, quod res arguit, earum amore erat flagrantissimus. Primus hic, illa ætate, libros antiquorum scriptorum sedulo conquirere curæ habuit; magnamque earum copiam in Vaticanam intulit ; primus cum assiduis hortatibus, tum ingentibus etiam propositis præmiis, ad meliorem literaturam è tenebris oblivionis in lucem revocandam, homines Italos stimulavit: primus, Græcæ linguæ auctores omnis sincerioris doctrinæ esse promos condos qui non ignoraret, ut Latino sermone exprimerentur, vehementissime optavit, et efficere contendit."

remaining fragments of Polybius. The body of this history, as he left it finished, was consisting of forty books, of which the eighth part* is only remaining to us entire. As for his negociations, when he was sent ambassador either from his own countrymen, † the commonwealth of the Achaians, or afterwards was employed by the Romans on their business with other nations, we are obliged to Constantine the Great for their preservation; for that emperor was so much in love with the dexterous management and wisdom of our author, that he caused them all to be faithfully transcribed, and made frequent use of them in his own dispatches and affairs with foreign princes, as his best guides in his conceruments with them.

Polybius, as you will find in reading of him, though he principally intended the history of the Romans, and the establishment of their empire over the greatest part of the world which was then known, yet had in his eye the general history of the times in which he lived, not forgetting either the wars of his own country with their neighbours of Etolia, or the concurrent affairs of Macedonia and the provinces of Greece, which is properly so called; nor the monarchies of Asia and Egypt; nor the republic of the Carthaginians, with the

That is, the first five books.

+ Polybius, the historian, was born at Megalopolis, in Arcadia, in the fourth year of the 143rd Olympiad, about 205 years before the Christian era. Being carried to Rome as an hostage, he became the companion and friend of the younger Scipio Africanus; accompanied him in his campaigns; and is said to have witnessed the destruction of Carthage, in the 158th Olympiad. Having returned to his native country, he died in the 164th Olympiad, 124 years before Christ, in consequence of a fall from his horse.

The history of Polybius embraced the space from the first year of the 140th to the first of the 153rd Olympiad, being fifty-three years.

several traverses of their fortunes, either in relation to the Romans, or independent to the wars which they waged with them; besides what happened in Spain and Sicily, and other European countries. The time, which is taken up in this history, consists of three-and-fifty years; and the greatest part of it is employed in the description of those events, of which the author was an eye-witness, or bore a considerable part in the conduct of them. But in what particular time or age it was, when mankind received that irrecoverable loss of this noble history, is not certainly delivered to us. It appears to have been perfect in the reign of Constantine, by what I have already noted; and neither Casaubon, nor any other, can give us any further account concerning it.

The first attempt towards a translation of him, was by command of the same Pope Nicholas the Fifth, already mentioned, who esteemed him the prince of Greek historians; would have him continually in his hands; and used to make this judgment of him,-that, if he yielded to one or two, in the praise of eloquence, yet, in wisdom, and all other accomplishments belonging to a perfect historian, he was at least equal to any other writer, Greek or Roman, and perhaps excelled them all. This is the author, who is now offered to us in our mother-tongue, recommended by the nobility of his birth, by his institution in arts and sciences, by his knowledge in natural and moral philosophy, and particularly the politics; by his being conversant both in the arts of peace and war; by his education under his father Lycortas, who voluntarily deposed himself from his sovereignty of Megalopolis to become a principal member of the Achaian commonwealth, which then flourished under the management of Aratus; by his friend