54 BACON 



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 re- 

 duced them to base and unprofitable dregs ; whence all men of 

 sound judgment declare the use of them ought to be banished. 



CHAPTER VII 



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 portion 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 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 per- 

 son, in whom actions, both great and small, public and private, 

 are blended together, must of necessity give a more genuine, 

 native, and lively representation, and such as is fitter for imi- 

 tation. 



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, whilst 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 invention. This exception, however, must 

 be made to the sincerity of relations, that, if they be wrote near 



