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JUNIUS.
185
of antiquity. The text is in Tacitus: you know best where to look for the commentary.
JUNIUS.
LETTER XXVI.
A WORD AT PARTING TO JUNIUS.
7. October, 1769.
[1]SIR,
AS you have not favoured me with either of the explanations demanded of you, I can have nothing more to say to you upon my own account. Your mercy to me, or tenderness for yourself, has been very great. The public will judge of your motives. If your excess of modesty forbids you
- ↑ Measures, and not men, is the common cant of affected moderation; a base counterfeit language, fabricated by knaves, and made current among fools. Such gentle censure is not fitted to the present degenerate state of society. What does it avail to expose the absurd contrivance, or pernicious tendency of measures, if the man, who advises or executes, shall be suffered not only to escape with impunity, but even to preserve his power, and insult us with the favour of his Sovereign. I would recommend to the reader the whole of Mr. Pope's letter to Doctor Arbuthnot, dated 26. July, 1734, from which the following is an extract: "To reform, and not to chastise, I am afraid, is impossible; and that the best precepts, as well as the best laws, would prove of small use, if there were no examples to enforce them. To attack vices in the abstract, without touching persons, may be safe fighting, indeed, but it is fighting with shadows. My greatest comfort and encouragement to proceed has been to see, that those who have no shame, and no fear of any thing else, have appeared touched by my satires."
