Death only closes a Man's Reputation, and determines it as good or bad. - Joseph Addison

Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.

The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, And heavily in clouds brings on the day, The great, the important day, Big with the fate Of Cato, and of Rome.

If men of eminence are exposed to censure on one hand, they are as much liable to flattery on the other. If they receive reproaches which are not due to them, they likewise receive praises which they do not deserve. In a word, the man in a high post is never regarded with an indifferent eye, but always considered as a friend or an enemy. For this reason persons in great stations have seldom their true characters drawn till several years after their deaths. Their personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can have justice done them. When writers have the least opportunity of knowing the truth, they are in the best disposition to tell it. It is therefore the privilege of posterity to adjust the characters of illustrious persons, and to set matters right between those antagonists who by their rivalry for greatness divided a whole age into factions.