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100 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [ill. 3 
blessings: and this is a work which hath passed through 
the labour of many, and therefore I cannot present as 
omitted. 
4. There are also other parts of learning which are 
appendices to history. For all the exterior proceedings 
of man consist of words and deeds; whereof history 
doth properly receive and retain in memory the deeds, 
and if words, yet but as inducements and passages to 
deeds; so are there other books and writings, which are 
appropriate_to the custody and receipt of words only; 
which likewise are of three sorts; orations, letters, and 
brief speeches or sayings. Orations are pleadings, 
speeches of counsel, laudatives, invectives, apologies, 
reprehensions, orations of formality or ceremony, and 
the like. Letters are according to all the variety of oc- 
casions, advertisements, advices, directions, propositions, 
petitions, commendatory, expostulatory, satisfactory, of 
compliment, of pleasure, of discourse, and all other pas- 
sages of action. And such as are written from wise men 
are of all the words of man, in my judgement, the best ; 
for they are more natural than orations, and public 
speeches, and more advised than conferences or present 
speeches.. So again letters of affairs from such as. 
manage them, or are privy to them, are of all others the 
best instructions for history, and to a diligent reader the 
best histories in themselves. For apophthegms, it is a 
great loss of that book of Czsar’s; for as his history, and 
those few letters of his which we have, and those apo- 
phthegms which were of his own, excel all men’s else, so I 
suppose would his collection of apophthegms have done. 
For as for those which are collected by others, either I 
have no taste in such matters, or else their choice hath 
not been happy. But upon these three kinds of writings 
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