II. 4.] THE SECOND BOOK. 91 



4. In these kinds of imperfect histories I do assign 

 no deficience, for they are tanquam 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 

 represented 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 e minimi s 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 



