The history will present to our view a series of all the crimes which usually arise from inordinate ambition; scenes of jealousy and perfidy, treason, ingratitude, and flagrant abuses of sovereign power; cruelty, impiety, an utter oblivion of the natural sentiments of probity and honour, with the violation of all laws human and divine, will rise before us. We shall behold nothing but fatal dissensions, destructive wars, and dreadful revolutions. Men, originally friends, brought up together, and natives of the same country, companions in the same dangers, and instruments in the accomplishment of the same exploits and victories, will conspire to tear in pieces the empire they had all concurred to form at the expense of their blood. We shall see the captains of Alexander sacrifice the mother, the wives, the brother, the sisters, of that prince, to their own ambition; without sparing even those to whom they themselves either owed or gave life. We shall no longer behold those glorious times of Greece, that were once so productive of great men and great examples; or, if we should happen to discover some traces and remains of them, they will only resemble the gleams of lightning that shoot along in a rapid track, and attract attention only in consequence of the profound darkness that precedes and follows them. I acknowledge myself to be sufficiently sensible how much a writer is to be pitied, for being obliged to represent human nature in such colours and lineaments as dishonour her, and which cannot fail of inspiring disgust and a secret affliction in the minds of those who are made spectators of such a picture. History loses whatever is most interesting and most capable of conveying pleasure and instruction, when she can only produce those effects, by inspiring the mind with horror for criminal actions, and by a representation of the calamities which usually succeed them, and are to be considered as their just punishment. It is difficult to engage the attention of a reader, for any considerable time, on objects which only raise his indignation, and it would be affronting him, to seem desirous of dissuading him from the excess of inordinate passions, of which he conceives himself incapable. How is it possible to diffuse any interest through a narration, which has nothing to offer but an uniform series of vices and great crimes; and which makes it necessary to enter into a particular detail of the actions and characters of men born for the calamity of the human race, and whose very name should not be transmitted to posterity? It may even be thought dangerous, to familiarize the minds of the generality of mankind to uninterrupted scenes of too successful iniquity and to be particular in describing the unjust success which waited on those illustrious criminals, the long duration of whose prosperity being frequently attended with the privileges and rewards of virtue, may be thought an imputation on Providence by persons of weak understandings.