92 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [BOOK 



CHAPTER IX. 



Second Division of the History of Times into Annuls and Journals. 



HISTORY of times is likewise divisible into annals and 

 journals, according to the observation of Tacitus, where, 

 mentioning the magnificence of certain structures, he adds, 

 &quot; It was found suitable to the Roman dignity that illustrious 

 things should be committed to annals, but such as these to 

 the public journals of the city;&quot; 8 thus referring what related 

 to the state of the commonwealth to annals, and smaller 

 matters to journals. And so there should be a kind of 

 heraldry in regulating the dignities of books as well as per 

 sons : for as nothing takes more from the dignity of a state 

 than confusion of orders and degrees, so it greatly takes from 

 the authority of history to intermix matters of triumph, 

 ceremony, and novelty, with matters of state. And it were 

 to be wished that this distinction prevailed ; but in our 

 times journals are only used at sea and in military expedi 

 tions, whereas among the ancients it was a regal honour to 

 have the daily acts of the palace recorded, as we see in the 

 case of Ahasuerus, king of Persia. b And the journals of 

 Alexander the Great contained even trivial matters; 6 yet 

 journals are not destined for trivial things alone, as annala 

 are for serious ones, but contain all things promiscuously, 

 whether of greater or of less concern. 



CHAPTER X. 



Second Division of Special Civil History into Pure and Mixed. 

 THE last division of civil history is into pure and mixed. 

 Of the mixed there are two eminent kinds, the one princi 

 pally civil, and the other principally natural : for a kind of 

 writing has been introduced that does not give particular 

 narrations in the continued thread of a history, but where 

 the writer collects and culls them, with choice, out of an 

 author, then reviewing and as it were ruminating upon 

 them, takes occasion to treat of political subjects; and tliis 



Annals, xiii. 81. b Esther vi. 1. 



c Plutarch s Symposium, i. qu. 6 ; and Alex. Life, xxiii. 70. 



