When
writers have the least opportunity of knowing the truth, they are in the
best disposition to tell it.

It is therefore the privilege of posterity to adjust the characters of
illustrious persons, and to set matters right between those antagonists
who by their rivalry for greatness divided a whole age into factions. We
can now allow Caesar to be a great man, without derogating from Pompey;
and celebrate the virtues of Cato, without detracting from those of
Caesar. Every one that has been long dead has a due proportion of praise
allotted him, in which, whilst he lived, his friends were too profuse,
and his enemies too sparing.

According to Sir Isaac Newton's calculations, the last comet that made
its appearance, in 1680, imbibed so much heat by its approaches to the
sun, that it would have been two thousand times hotter than red-hot iron,
had it been a globe of that metal; and that supposing it as big as the
earth, and at the same distance from the sun, it would be fifty thousand
years in cooling, before it recovered its natural temper. In the like
manner, if an Englishman considers the great ferment into which our
political world is thrown at present, and how intensely it is heated in
all its parts, he cannot suppose that it will cool again in less than
three hundred years. In such a tract of time it is possible that the
heats of the present age may be extinguished, and our several classes of
great men represented under their proper characters. Some eminent
historian may then probably arise that will not write _recentibus odiis_,
as Tacitus expresses it, with the passions and prejudices of a
contemporary author, but make an impartial distribution of fame among the
great men of the present age.

I cannot forbear entertaining myself very often with the idea of such an
imaginary historian describing the reign of Anne the First, and
introducing it with a preface to his reader, that he is now entering upon
the most shining part of the English story. The great rivals in fame
will be then distinguished according to their respective merits, and
shine in their proper points of light. Such an one, says the historian,
though variously represented by the writers of his own age, appears to
have been a man of more than ordinary abilities, great application, and
uncommon integrity: nor was such an one, though of an opposite party and
interest, inferior to him in any of these respects. The several
antagonists who now e