which is worthy to be read. Besides, your work
can without wounding their self-love instruct unlettered persons who
are not prepared by any consciousness of eloquence for the service of
the Republic[199]; and the experience which you have gained by being
tossed to and fro on the waves of stormy altercation, they in their
more tranquil lot may more fortunately make their own. Again (and here
we make an appeal which your loyalty cannot resist), if you allow
posterity to be ignorant of the numerous benefits conferred by your
King, it is in vain that with benevolent eagerness he so often granted
your requests. Do not, we pray, draw back once more into silence and
obscurity those who, while you were sounding their eulogies, seemed
worthy to receive illustrious dignities. For you then professed to
describe them with true praises, and to paint their characters with
the colours of history[200]. Now if you leave it to posterity to write
the panegyric on these men, you take away as it were from those who
die an honourable death the funeral oration to which, by the customs
of our ancestors, they are entitled. Besides, in these letters you
correct immorality with a ruler's authority; you break the insolence
of the transgressor; you restore to the laws their reverence. Do you
still hesitate about publishing that which, as you know, satisfies so
many needs? Will you conceal, if we may say so, the mirror of your own
mind, in which all ages to come may behold your likeness? Often does
it happen that a man begets a son unlike himself, but his writings are
hardly ever found unequal to his character[201]. The progeny of his
own will is his truest child; what is born in the secret recesses of
his own heart is that by which posterity will know him best.

[Footnote 197: 'Regum quinetiam gloriosa colloquia pro magna diei
parte in bonum publicum te occupare noverunt.' It is difficult to
translate the expressive term, 'gloriosa colloquia.']

[Footnote 198: 'Ut fastidium sit otiosis exspectare quae tu continuo
labore cognosceris sustinere.' I cannot translate this literally.]

[Footnote 199: 'Rudes viros et ad Rempublicam conscia facundia
praeparatos.' Surely some negative has dropped out of the latter
clause.]

[Footnote 200: 'Tu enim illos assumpsisti vera laude describere, et
quodammodo historico colore depingere.']

[Footnote 201: 'Contingit enim dissimilem filium plerumque generari,
oratio dispar moribus vix potest inveniri.']

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