Sentence:  ... it is indeed Claudius himself who is writing this book, and no mere secretary of his, and not one of those official annalists, either, to whom public men are in the habit of communicating their recollections, in the hope that elegant writing will <WSD>eke out</WSD> meagreness of subject-matter and flattery soften vices. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  To supplement.