We can now allow Caesar to be a great man, without
derogating from Pompey; and celebrate the virtues of Cato, without
detracting from those of Caesar. Every one that has been long dead
has a due proportion of praise allotted him, in which, whilst he
lived, his friends were too profuse, and his enemies too sparing.
According to Sir Isaac Newton's calculations, the last comet that
made its appearance, in 1680, imbibed so much heat by its approaches
to the sun, that it would have been two thousand times hotter than
red-hot iron, had it been a globe of that metal; and that supposing
it as big as the earth, and at the same distance from the sun, it
would be fifty thousand years in cooling, before it recovered its
natural temper. In the like manner, if an Englishman considers the
great ferment into which our political world is thrown at present,
and how intensely it is heated in all its parts, he cannot suppose
that it will cool again in less than three hundred years. In such a
tract of time it is possible that the heats of the present age may
be extinguished, and our several classes of great men represented
under their proper characters. Some eminent historian may then
probably arise that will not write recentibus odiis, as Tacitus
expresses it, with the passions and prejudices of a contemporary
author, but make an impartial distribution of fame among the great
men of the present age.
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