Excerpt from The Prose Works of John Milton, Vol. 4 of 7: With Life of the Author HE beginning of nations, thois excepted of whom facrcd books have fpoken, is to this day unknown. Nor only the beginning, but the deeds alfo of many fucceeding ages, yea, periods of ages, either wholly un known, or oblcuied and blemifhed with fables. Whe ther it were that the ufe of letters came in long after, or were it the violence of barbarous inundations, or they themfelves at certain revolutions of time, fatally decaying, and degenerating into floth and ignorance; whereby the monuments of more ancient cility have been fome deltroyed, (ome lol'c. Perhaps difefteem and contempt of the public affairs then prefent, as not worth recording, might partly be in caufe. Certainly ofttlmes we fee that wxfe men, and of bel't ability, have forborn to write the afts of their own days, while they beheld with ajuft loathing and difdain, not only how unworthy, how perverl'e, how corrupt, but often how ignoble, how petty, how below all hiltory the pericus and their actions were; who, either by fortune or fome rude election. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.