the pride and happiness of my life.

It is long since I have been returned and settled in the bosom of competence and peace: my translation frequently engaged my thoughts, but I had lost the ardour and the confidence of youth, and was seriously doubtful of my abilities to do it justice. I have wished a thousand times that I could decline it altogether; but the ever-recurring idea that there were people of the description I have already mentioned, who had just and forcible claims on me for the due performance of my engagement, forbade the thought; and I slowly proceeded towards the completion of a work in which I should never have engaged, had my friend's inexperience, or my own, suffered us to suspect for a moment the labour and the talents of more than one kind, absolutely necessary to its success in any tolerable degree. Such as I could make it, it is now before the public.