ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 105 



and sincerity. For chronicles represent only grand public 

 actions, and external shows and appearances to the people, 

 and drop the smaller passages and motions of men and 

 things. But as the divine artificer hangs the greatest weight 

 upon the smallest strings, so such histories rather show the 

 pomp of affairs, than their true and inward springs. And 

 though it intersperses counsel, yet delighting in grandeur, 

 it attributes more gravity and prudence to human actions, 

 than really appears in them ; so that satire might be a truer 

 picture of human life, than certain histories of this kind: 

 whereas lives, if wrote with care and judgment, proposing 

 to represent a person, in whom actions, both great and 

 small, public and private, are blended together, must of 

 necessity give a more genuine, native, and lively represen 

 tation, and such as is fitter for imitation. 



Particular relations of actions, as of the Peloponnesian 

 war, and the expedition of Cyrus, may likewise be made 

 with greater truth and exactness than histories of times; as 

 their subject is more level to the inquiry and capacity of the 

 writer, while they who undertake the history of any large 

 portion of time must need meet with blanks and empty 

 spaces, which they generally fill up out of their own inven 

 tion. This exception, however, must be made to the sin 

 cerity of relations, that, if they be wrote near the times of 

 the actions themselves, they are, in that case, to be greatly 

 suspected of partiality or prejudice. But as it is usual for 

 opposite parties to publish relations of the same transac 

 tions, they, by this means, open the way to truth, which 

 lies between the two extremes: so that, after the heat of 

 contention is allayed, a good and wise historian may hence 

 be furnished with matter for a more perfect history. 



As to the deficiencies in these three kinds of history, 

 doubtless many particular transactions have been left un 

 recorded, to the great prejudice, in point of honor and glory, 

 of those kingdoms and states wherein they passed. But to 

 omit other nations, we have particular reason to complain 

 to your Majesty of the imperfection of the present history 



