They who doubt his good faith sufficiently accuse themselves of being his enemy upon some other account.  His opinions are sound, and lean to the right side in the Roman affairs.  And yet I am angry at him for judging more severely of Pompey than consists with the opinion of those worthy men who lived in the same time, and had dealings with him; and to have reputed him on a par with Marius and Sylla, excepting that he was more close.  Other writers have not acquitted his intention in the government of affairs from ambition and revenge; and even his friends were afraid that victory would have transported him beyond the bounds of reason, but not to so immeasurable a degree as theirs; nothing in his life threatened such express cruelty and tyranny.  Neither ought we to set suspicion against evidence; and therefore I do not believe Plutarch in this matter.  That his narrations were genuine and straightforward may, perhaps, be argued from this very thing, that they do not always apply to the conclusions of his judgments, which he follows according to the bias he has taken, very often beyond the matter he presents us withal, which he has not deigned to alter in the least degree.  He needs no excuse for having approved the religion of his time, according as the laws enjoined, and to have been ignorant of the true; this was his misfortune, not his fault.

I have principally considered his judgment, and am not very well satisfied therewith throughout; as these words in the letter that Tiberius, old and sick, sent to the senate.  “What shall I write to you, sirs, or how should I write to you, or what should I not write to you at this time?  May the gods and goddesses lay a worse punishment upon me than I am every day tormented with, if I know!” I do not see why he should so positively apply them to a sharp remorse that tormented the conscience of Tiberius; at least, when I was in the same condition, I perceived no such thing.

And this also seemed to me a little mean in him that, having to say that he had borne an honourable office in Rome, he excuses himself that he does not say it out of ostentation; this seems, I say, mean for such a soul as his; for not to speak roundly of a man’s self implies some want of courage; a man of solid and lofty judgment, who judges soundly and surely, makes use of his own example upon all occasions, as well as those of others; and gives evidence as freely of himself as of a third person.  We are to pass by these common rules of civility, in favour of truth and liberty.  I dare not only speak of myself, but to speak only of myself:  when I write of anything else, I miss my way and wander from my subject.  I am not so indiscreetly enamoured of myself, so wholly mixed up with, and bound to myself, that I cannot distinguish and consider myself apart, as I do a neighbour or a tree:  ’tis equally a fault not to discern how far a man’s worth extends, and to say more than a man discovers in himself.  We owe more love to God than to ourselves, and know Him less; and yet speak of Him as much as we will.