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Let me instance 'candidate. Does it not argue an incurious spirit to be content that this word should be given and received by us a hundred times, as at a contested election it is, and we never ask ourselves, What does it mean? why is one offering himself to the choice of his fellows called a 'candidate'? If the word lay evidently beyond our horizon, we might acquiesce in our ignorance; but resting, as manifestly it does, upon the Latin 'candidus, it challenges inquiry, and a very little of this would at once put us in possession of the Roman custom for which it witnesses namely, that such as intended to claim the suffrages of the people for any of the chief offices of the State, presented themselves beforehand to them in a white toga, being therefore called 'candidati. And as it so often happens that in seeking information upon one subject we obtain it upon another, so will it probably be here; for in fully learning what this custom was, you will hardly fail to learn how we obtained 'ambition, what originally it meant, and how Milton should have written
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