Letter 7020: I have read your book * and taken the greatest possible pains in marking the passages which struck me as requiring...
Pliny the Younger→Cornelius Tacitus|c. 107 AD|Pliny the Younger
education booksfriendship
To Tacitus.
I have read your book * and taken the greatest possible pains in marking the passages which struck me as requiring alteration or excision. I speak frankly, for it is my custom to tell the truth and yours to hear it without annoyance. Besides, it is just those people who most deserve praise who take criticism with the least impatience. Now I am looking forward to receiving my book from you with your critical notes. To me this is a most gratifying and even beautiful interchange of compliments. I am really charmed to think that if those who come after us are interested in us at all, the tale will everywhere be told of how you and I lived together as devoted, frank and loyal friends. It will be thought as uncommon as it is remarkable that two men of nearly the same age and dignities, who had achieved some distinction in the world of letters - for I am bound to speak rather sparingly in your praise as I am associating myself with you - should mutually admire and encourage one another to write. When I was quite a young man, and you had already won reputation and glory for yourself, it was my earnest wish to follow in your footsteps, and be next to you and recognised as "next to you, though the interval between us was great". ** There were many men of genius in those days, but the similarity of our natures compelled me to regard you as the one whom I could best imitate, and the one most worthy of such imitation. So I am the more delighted to find that, whenever the conversation turns upon literature, our names are mentioned together, and that, when people speak of you, my name immediately occurs to their minds. There are, it is true, some who are preferred to both of us. But so long as our names are coupled together I care not whose is placed first, because, in my opinion, he who is placed next to you is easily first. Moreover, you must have noticed this in the wills where our names have occurred, for we invariably receive the same legacies, and in equal shares, unless it so happens that the maker of the will is the particular friend of one of us. All these things point to the moral that we should increase the affection we bear one another, since we are linked together by so many ties, by our literary tastes, characters, and reputations, and above all, by the final judgments of dying men. Farewell.
[Note: It is not known which book this refers to - perhaps a book from the Histories of Tacitus. See also letter viii. 7.
]
[Note: Virgil, Aeneid, v. 320.]
L To Tacitus.
I have read your book * and taken the greatest possible pains in marking the passages which struck me as requiring alteration or excision. I speak frankly, for it is my custom to tell the truth and yours to hear it without annoyance. Besides, it is just those people who most deserve praise who take criticism with the least impatience. Now I am looking forward to receiving my book from you with your critical notes. To me this is a most gratifying and even beautiful interchange of compliments. I am really charmed to think that if those who come after us are interested in us at all, the tale will everywhere be told of how you and I lived together as devoted, frank and loyal friends. It will be thought as uncommon as it is remarkable that two men of nearly the same age and dignities, who had achieved some distinction in the world of letters - for I am bound to speak rather sparingly in your praise as I am associating myself with you - should mutually admire and encourage one another to write. When I was quite a young man, and you had already won reputation and glory for yourself, it was my earnest wish to follow in your footsteps, and be next to you and recognised as "next to you, though the interval between us was great". ** There were many men of genius in those days, but the similarity of our natures compelled me to regard you as the one whom I could best imitate, and the one most worthy of such imitation. So I am the more delighted to find that, whenever the conversation turns upon literature, our names are mentioned together, and that, when people speak of you, my name immediately occurs to their minds. There are, it is true, some who are preferred to both of us. But so long as our names are coupled together I care not whose is placed first, because, in my opinion, he who is placed next to you is easily first. Moreover, you must have noticed this in the wills where our names have occurred, for we invariably receive the same legacies, and in equal shares, unless it so happens that the maker of the will is the particular friend of one of us. All these things point to the moral that we should increase the affection we bear one another, since we are linked together by so many ties, by our literary tastes, characters, and reputations, and above all, by the final judgments of dying men. Farewell.
(**) It is not known which book this refers to - perhaps a book from the Histories of Tacitus. See also letter viii. 7.
(**) Virgil, Aeneid, v. 320.
◆
To Tacitus.
I have read your book * and taken the greatest possible pains in marking the passages which struck me as requiring alteration or excision. I speak frankly, for it is my custom to tell the truth and yours to hear it without annoyance. Besides, it is just those people who most deserve praise who take criticism with the least impatience. Now I am looking forward to receiving my book from you with your critical notes. To me this is a most gratifying and even beautiful interchange of compliments. I am really charmed to think that if those who come after us are interested in us at all, the tale will everywhere be told of how you and I lived together as devoted, frank and loyal friends. It will be thought as uncommon as it is remarkable that two men of nearly the same age and dignities, who had achieved some distinction in the world of letters - for I am bound to speak rather sparingly in your praise as I am associating myself with you - should mutually admire and encourage one another to write. When I was quite a young man, and you had already won reputation and glory for yourself, it was my earnest wish to follow in your footsteps, and be next to you and recognised as "next to you, though the interval between us was great". ** There were many men of genius in those days, but the similarity of our natures compelled me to regard you as the one whom I could best imitate, and the one most worthy of such imitation. So I am the more delighted to find that, whenever the conversation turns upon literature, our names are mentioned together, and that, when people speak of you, my name immediately occurs to their minds. There are, it is true, some who are preferred to both of us. But so long as our names are coupled together I care not whose is placed first, because, in my opinion, he who is placed next to you is easily first. Moreover, you must have noticed this in the wills where our names have occurred, for we invariably receive the same legacies, and in equal shares, unless it so happens that the maker of the will is the particular friend of one of us. All these things point to the moral that we should increase the affection we bear one another, since we are linked together by so many ties, by our literary tastes, characters, and reputations, and above all, by the final judgments of dying men. Farewell.
[Note: It is not known which book this refers to - perhaps a book from the Histories of Tacitus. See also letter viii. 7.
]
[Note: Virgil, Aeneid, v. 320.]
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.