104 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



serving the edicts of princes, decrees of council, judicial 

 proceedings, declarations, letters of state, and public ora 

 tions, without continuing the thread of the narration. 



Antiquities are the wrecks of history, wherein the mem 

 ory of things is almost lost; or such particulars as indus 

 trious persons, with exact and scrupulous diligence, can 

 any way collect from genealogies, calendars, titles, inscrip 

 tions, monuments, coins, names, etymologies, proverbs, 

 traditions, archives, instruments, fragments of public and 

 private history, scattered passages of books no way his 

 torical, etc. ; by which means something is recovered from 

 the deluge of time. This is a laborious work; yet accept 

 able to mankind, as carrying with it a kind of reverential 

 awe, and deserves to come in the place of those fabulous 

 and fictitious origins of nations we abound with; though it 

 has the less authority, as but few have examined and exer 

 cised a liberty of thought about it. 



In these kinds of imperfect history, no deficiency need 

 be noted, they being of their own nature imperfect: but 

 epitomes of history are the corruption and moths that have 

 fretted and corroded many sound and excellent bodies of 

 history, and reduced them to base and unprofitable dregs; 

 whence all men of sound judgment declare the use of them 

 ought to be banished. 



CHAPTER YII 



Division of History into Chronicles, Biographies, and Perfect Relations. 

 The Development of their parts 



JUST history is of three kinds, with regard to the three 

 objects it designs to represent; which are either a por 

 tion of time, a memorable person, or an illustrious 

 action. The first kind we call writing annals or chronicles; 

 the second, lives; and the third, narratives or relations. 

 Chronicles share the greatest esteem and reputation, but 

 lives excel in advantage and use, as relations do in truth 



