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editor or biographer is likely to be perpetually verging towards extravagance, where his feelings are awakened and his discretion laid asleep, by personal ties and recent events. With these arguments, which had hitherto satisfied myself, I again resisted your attack. It would be impertinent, to enter further into them here. Suffice it to say, that they were silenced by those, to whose judgment I must surrender, and whose sincerity I have always found superior to compliment or dissimulation.
But I have other inducements for addressing you in the present case. Our circumstances, opinions, and conduct, have not been altogether dissimilar. We have both of us felt, I hope we may say duly, the importance of the office, which nature and society have entrusted to our care. We have both met with the best materials to work upon. In this principally do we seem to differ, that your task is now accomplished: mine, as far as the subject of these memoirs is concerned, was prematurely
