ANDREW PORTAL, LECTURER OF ST. HELEN'S, IN ABINGDON, BERKS, AND USHER OF THE FREE GRAMMAR SCHOOL. A NEW EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED. OXFORD: PRINTED AND SOLD BY MUNDAY AND SLATTER; Sold also EY LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN, LONDON. PREFACE. THE principal design of this translation is to assist such as are desirous to read these two most excellent pieces of oratory in the original; and therefore the length and turn of the periods are everywhere conformable to the original, except where it was next to impossible to preserve them in our language, without departing too far from our idiom, or falling into obscurity. If the language should, by this means, not always have that easy flow, which might have been obtained by preserving the sense only, and giving it a new turn, I hope the greater usefulness of this method, to students, will compensate that defect; especially as this work was chiefly undertaken with a view to their service. However, as I intended, likewise, to convey some notion of the beauties of the original to even the unlettered reader, that so this work might be of more general advantage, I have endeavoured to keep up, everywhere, to the purity and idiom of our own language; and by small insertions (generally printed in a different character) to remove, now and then, little obscurities, under which a bare rendering would have laboured. When I first began this work, I did not know that these pieces had been translated into the French tongue by Mons. Tourreil, who has also added many very excellent and learned notes; nor did I see his translation till I had finished my own. However, it came to my hands time enough to be of great service to me; and it is but justice to that judicious author, to confess here, that I am indebted to his translation, in some places, for a better chosen word, and, in some few others, for a more correct notion of the passage; but, above all, for a great number of notes, which I have acknowledged by setting his name to them. This method saved me a great deal of trouble, and I did not doubt but that it would be as acceptable to the reader as any thing I could have said of my own. A great part of the notes are compiled, and I am answerable only for the choice of them. To these I have always added the author's name. As for those which I have added, either as helps for the better understanding the author, or for the justification of myself, and establishing my own opinion, when I found it necessary to differ from former interpreters, I shall say nothing of them; they are left to the judgment of such as are properly qualified to pronounce upon them, and must stand or fall by their decision. If it should happen that I have cleared up but one difficulty in these valuable orations, I shall think myself very well rewarded for my labour. I have, now and then, pointed out some of the principal beauties of these orations, and perhaps shall be censured for not having done it oftener, since it is certain I have taken no notice of far the greater part. But for this I had two good reasons; one, that it would have been too tedious, to have taken notice of all the principal beauties in works, every sentence of which contains something that would be thought a capital beauty in less perfect performances; another, |