Do not then, my dear lord, belie the first and earliest sentiments of
your heart. As you have ever heard me, let your attention be tripled
now. Read my letter once and again. Preserve it as a sacred deposit. Lay
it under your pillow. Meditate upon it fasting. Commit it to memory, and
repeat the scattered parcels of it, as Caesar is said to have done the
Greek alphabet, to cool your rising choler. Be this the amulet to
preserve you from danger! Be this the chart by which to steer the little
skiff of your political system safe into the port of historic
immortality!
My lord, you and I have read Machiavel together. It is true I am but a
bungler in Italian, and your lordship was generally obliged to interpret
for me. Your translation I dare say was always scientifical, but I was
seldom so happy as to see either grammar or sense in it. So far however
as I can guess at the drift of this celebrated author, he seems to have
written as the professor of only one science. He has treated of the art
of government, and has enquired what was wise, and what was political.
He has left the moralists to take care of themselves.
In the present essay, my lord, I shall follow the example of Machiavel.
I profess the same science, and I pretend only to have carried to much
greater heights an art to which he has given a considerable degree of
perfection.
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