Letter 8019: I find in study both delight and consolation.
To Maximus.
I find in study both delight and consolation. There is nothing in the world so pleasant as to give more pleasure than study can bestow, and there is no sorrow so grievous that it cannot alleviate. So while I have been sorely troubled by the illness of my wife and the ill-health of my household, some of whom even have died, I have fled to study as the one and only thing that could assuage my grief, for, while making me more sensible of my trouble, it also helps me to bear it with greater patience. But I have a habit of asking my friends to lend me their critical faculties upon any book which I am about to publish to the world, and I especially ask for yours. Will you please give special attention, closer even than you have given before, to the volume which you will receive with this letter, for I am afraid that, owing to my depression of spirit, I have hardly bestowed upon it the pains I ought. I could, indeed, master my grief sufficiently to write, but not sufficiently to write without preoccupation of mind and sadness of heart, for while on the one hand study leads to happiness, so on the other it needs a cheerful frame of mind before one can study to best advantage. Farewell.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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