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which he was now to contend against the uncounted myriads of 

 Persia*. 



Were I at the beginning instead of being near the close of 

 a great historical work, I should be tempted by the subject to 

 launch out pretty much at large into the history of this great man, 

 to whose original cast of character and comprehensive scope of 

 mind, bold to project, and vigorous to execute, plans of equal 

 magnificence and utility, and of which, had he lived to mature 

 them, the whole human race would probably have reaped the 

 lasting benefit, preceding historians do not appear to have done 

 sufficient justice. For what, had he been fortunate enough to have 

 lived to subdue the irregularities of youthful vanity and passion, 

 was not to have been expected from a prince of Alexander's genius 

 and talents, tutored in the military art by so consummate a general 

 as Philip, and in letters, philosophy, and politics, by so great a 

 master in every science as Aristotle. The task, indeed, of drawing 

 his portrait with the bold pencil which a character so transcendently 

 distinguished by the noblest qualities, however sullied by tempo- 

 rary excess, requires, properly belongs to the general historian of 

 his life, and not to him whose province is only to record his ex- 

 ploits in the limited sphere of Western Hindostan ; but I cannot 

 avoid, however prematurely, observing, that even those exploits en- 

 title him to immortality. For, what general ever, before himself, 

 carried on an Indian campaign, and kept the contested field, in the 

 country of a brave and obstinate enemy during two rainy seasons ? 

 or what soldiers, besides those inured to the hardy athletic exercises 

 of Greece, and brought up in the woods and mountains of Mace- 

 donia and Thessaly, could have borne, as, according to Diodorus, 

 they cheerfully did, a continued drenching rain of seventy days-f 1 , 



* Arrian Expedit. Alexand. lib. i. p. 18. f Diod. Sic. lib. xvii. cap. 94. 



