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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow XXVI.: To the illustrious Lord Henry de Bras. - The Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 2

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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: History
Subject Area: Religion
Topic: The English Revolution

XXVI.: To the illustrious Lord Henry de Bras. - John Milton, The Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 2 [1847]

Edition used:

The Prose Works of John Milton, With a Biographical Introduction by Rufus Wilmot Griswold. In Two Volumes (Philadelphia: John W. Moore, 1847). Vol. 2.

Part of: The Prose Works of John Milton, 2 vols.

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XXVI.

To the illustrious LordHenry de Bras.

Some engagements, most noble Lord, have prevented me from answering your letter so soon as I could wish. I wished to have done it the sooner because I saw that your letter, so full of erudition, left me less occasion for sending you my advice (which I believe that you desire more out of compliment to me than of any benefit to yourself) than my congratulations. First, I congratulate myself on having been so fortunate in characterising the merits of Sallust as to have excited you to the assiduous perusal of that author, who is so full of wisdom, and who may be read with so much advantage. Of him I will venture to assert what Quintilian said of Cicero, that he who loves Sallust is no mean proficient in historical composition. That precept of Aristotle in the third book of his rhetoric, which you wish me to explain, relates to the morality of the reflections and the fidelity of the narrative. It appears to me to need little comment, except that it should be appropriated not to the compositions of rhetoric but of history. For the offices of a rhetorician and an historian are as different as the arts which they profess. Polybius, Halicarnassus, Diodorus, Cicero, Lucian, and many others, whose works are interspersed with precepts on the subject, will better teach you what are the duties of an historian. I wish you every success in your travels and pursuits. Adieu.