“You have here the first volume of “Plutarch’s Lives” turned from the Greek into English; and give me leave to say, the first attempt of doing it from the originals. You may expect the remainder in four more, one after another, as fast as they may conveniently be dispatched from the press. It is not my business, or pretence, to judge of a work of this quality; neither do I take upon me to recommend it to the world, any farther than under the office of a fair and careful publisher, and in discharge of a trust deposited in my hands for the service of my country, and for a common good. I am not yet so insensible of the authority and reputation of so great a name, as not to consult the honour of the author, together with the benefit and satisfaction of the bookseller, as well as of the reader, in this undertaking. In order to which ends, I have, with all possible respect and industry, besought, solicited, and obtained, the assistance of persons equal to the enterprize, and not only critics in the tongue, but men of known fame and abilities for style and ornament; but I shall rather refer you to the learned and ingenious translators of this first part, (whose names you will find in the next page,) as a specimen of what you may promise yourself from the rest. “After this right done to the Greek author, I shall not need to say what profit and delight will accrue to the English reader from this version, when he shall see this illustrious piece in his own mother tongue, and the very spirit of the original transfused into the traduction; and in one word, “Plutarch’s Worthies” made yet more famous, by a translation that gives a farther lustre even to Plutarch himself. “Now as to the bookseller’s part, I must justify myself, that I have done all that to me belonged; that is to say, I have been punctually faithful to all my commissions toward the correctness and decency of the work; and I have said to myself, that which I now say to the public,—It is impossible but a book that comes into the world with so many circumstances of dignity, usefulness, and esteem, must turn to account.” TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF ORMOND, &c. MY LORD, Lucretius, endeavouring to prove from the principles of his philosophy, that the world had a casual beginning from the concourse of atoms, and that men, as well as the rest of animals, were produced from the vital heat and moisture of their mother earth, from the same principles is bound to answer this objection,—why men are not daily formed after the same manner; which he tells us, is, because the kindly warmth and procreative faculty of the ground is now worn out; the sun is a disabled lover; and the earth is past her teeming time.