74 Bacon 



ence, for they are Tanquam imperfecte mista ; and therefore 

 any deficience in them is but their nature. As for the cor 

 ruptions and moths of history, which are epitomes, the use 

 of them deserveth to be banished, as all men of sound judg 

 ment have confessed; as those that have fretted and cor 

 roded the sound bodies of many excellent histories, and 

 wrought them into base and unprofitable dregs. 1 



History, which may be called just and perfect history, is 

 of three kinds, according to the object which it propoundeth 

 or pretendeth to represent : for it either representeth a time, 

 or a person, or an action. The first we call chronicles, the 

 second lives, and the third narrations or relations. Of these, 

 although. the first be the most complete and absolute kind 

 of history, and hath most estimation and glory, yet the 

 second excelleth it in profit and use, and the third in verity 

 and sincerity. For history of times representeth the magni 

 tude of actions, and the public faces and deportments of 

 persons, and passeth over in silence the smaller passages 

 and motions of men and matters. But such being the 

 workmanship of God, as He doth hang the greatest weight 

 upon the smallest wires, Maxima e minimis suspendens, 2 

 it comes therefore to pass, that such histories do rather set 

 forth the pomp of business than the true and inward resorts 

 thereof. But lives, if they be well written, propounding 

 to themselves a person to represent in whom actions both 

 greater and smaller, public and private, have a commixture, 

 must of necessity contain a more true, native, and lively 

 representation. So again narrations and relations of 

 actions, as the war of Peloponnesus, the expedition of 

 Cyrus Minor, the conspiracy of Catiline, cannot but be 

 more purely and exactly true than histories of times, 

 because they may choose an argument comprehensible 

 within the notice and instructions of the writer: whereas 

 he that undertaketh the story of a time, especially of any 

 length, cannot but meet with many blanks and spaces 

 which he must be forced to fill up out of his own wit and 

 conjecture. 



For the History of Times, I mean of Civil History, the 

 providence of God hath made the distribution : for it hath 

 pleased God to ordain and illustrate two exemplar states 



1 As in the Epitomes written in the decline of Latin Literature. 

 1 Job xxvi. 7. &quot; Qui appendit terram super nihilum.&quot; 



