The same subject.
'We are sending two ambassadors to the most serene Emperor, who will salute your Greatness. We earnestly hope that your Excellency will speed them on their journey.'
BOOK XI.
PREFACE.
'The necessity for a Preface often arises from some contrariety in an Author's position which prevents him from writing as he would wish to write. It is admitted that it is not fair to expect the same degree of excellence from a busy man which we may reasonably look for in a man of leisure. But a man in high official position cannot be a man of leisure. It would be the highest disgrace to him if he were, since even his so-called privy-chamber[708] resounds with the noise of clamorous litigants.
'I can well understand that a man of few occupations will object against me, here that a word has been thrown out with ill-considered haste, there that a commonplace sentiment has not been dressed up in sufficiently ornamental language, or there that I have not complied with the rules of the Ancients by making my persons speak "in character." But the busy man, hurried from one cause to another, and constantly under the necessity of dictating to one man and replying to another, will not make these objections, because the consciousness of his own literary perils will make him tender in his judgments. And yet there is something even in the pressure of business which sometimes promotes briskness of mind, since the art of speaking is one which is placed very much in our own power[709].
'If anyone objects that I, placed in the height of the Praetorian dignity, should have dictated so few decisions of a legal kind, let him know that this was the result of my associating with myself that most prudent man [Felix][710], whose advice I have followed in every case. He is a man of absolute purity of character, of surpassing knowledge of the law, of distinguished accuracy of speech; a young man with the gravity of age, a sweet pleader, a measured orator; one who by his graceful discharge of his official duties has earned the favourable opinion of the public.
'Had it not been for his help, overwhelmed by so great a multitude of causes, I must either have been found unequal to the burden, or else perchance have seemed arrogant [in my disregard of previously settled decisions]. But, what was more important still, relieved by his labours from this duty, I was able to give such attention to the higher affairs of the State, that I could not fail to win approbation even in those arduous duties.