182 JEROME CAKDAN. 



wards determine to defend them. Obstinacy must needs 

 pass for firmness, fierceness for courtesy. He does not err 

 through anything that falls from him too hastily, until he 

 supports his fault with an unworthy defence. Therefore, if 

 while he was living, from a consciousness of their truth, 

 he received my endeavours to correct him silently, what 

 could have been more to my honour? For he would 

 have received my words as from a teacher or a father with 

 the most modest assent. But if he had embroiled himself 

 in a more pertinacious disputation, who cannot now 

 understand, from the agitation of mind already produced, 

 how that would have gone near to madness ? 



So much that divine man shrewdly considered. What 

 he could not bear, he bore; what living he cculd not 

 endure, dying he could. And what he could have borne 

 he did not bear, that is, the communion of our minds and 

 studious judgments for the public good. Wherefore, I 

 lament my lot, since I had the clearest reasons for en- 

 gaging in this struggle, the most explicit cause of conflict, 

 but instead of the anticipated victory I obtained such a result 

 as neither a steadfast man might hope (for who would have 

 anticipated such an end to the affair ?) or a strong man desire. 



" My praise of this man can scarcely be called praise of 

 an enemy. For I lament the loss suffered by the whole 

 republic, the causes of which grief the herd of literary 

 men may measure as they can, but they will not be 



