NYPL  RESEARCH  LIBRARIES


3  3433  08233260  6


IsYcVOX  Library


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive

in  2007  with  funding  from

IVIicrosoft  Corporation


http://www.archive.org/details/classichistoricpOObruc


^


CLASSIC


AND


HISTOEIC  PORTRAITS


BY


JAMES    BRUCE


R  E  D  F  I  E  L  D  ,

110    AND     112    NASSAU    STREET,     NEW    YORK
18  5  4.
/


PREFACE.
I  BELIEVE  that  there  are  not  rnaiiy  persons  who
read  biography  with  interest,  who  have  not  felt  a
desire  for  a  more  intimate  personal  acquaintance,
as  it  may  be  called,  than  is  usually  afforded  them
with  those  men  and  w^omen  whose  virtues  and  vices
joined  with  their  natural  gifts  and  acquired  accom-
plishments, made  them  either  illustrious  or  infamous
in  their  own  days,  and  still  influence  the  world  at  the
distance  of  centuries  after  their  death.  Those  works
in  which  the  narrative  of  great  public  aifairs  is  mixed
up  with  the  more  minute  private  and  personal  details
and  descriptions,  w^hich  pedants  and  philosophers
consider  to  be  below^  w^hat  they  call  "  the  dignity  of
history,"  are,  I  believe,  in  spite  of  learned  reprehen-
sion, read  with  more  pleasure  than  the  more  pretend-
ing volumes  in  which  this  disagreeable  "  dignity  of
history"  is  stiffly  and  proudly  sustained.  When  the
Roman  historian  deprecates  the  censure  of  those  grave
and  surly  readers  who,   as  he  anticipates,    will  charge


IV  P  E  E  F  A  C  E.
