a] THE SECOND BOOK, ~ 9 
4. In these kinds ‘of unperfect histories I do assign 
no deficience, for they are /anquam imperfecte mista; and 
therefore any deficience in them is but their nature. 
As for the corruptions and moths of history, which are 
epitomes, the use of them deserveth to be banished, as 
all men of sound judgement have confessed, as those 
that have fretted and corroded the sound bodies of many 
excellent histories, and wrought them into base and 
unprofitable dregs. 
5. History, which may be called just and perfect his- 
tory, 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 narra- 
tions 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 magnitude 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 é minimis suspendens, 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 commix- 
ture, 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 
