THE SECOND BOOK 81 



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 

 history, is of three kinds, according to the object 

 which it propoundeth, or pretendeth to represent : for 

 it either representeth a time, or a person, or an action. 

 The first we call chronicles, the second lives, and the 

 third narrations 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 deport- 

 ments 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 minimis 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 Uves, if they be well written, propounding to them- 

 selves a person to represent, in whom actions both 

 greater and smaller, public and private, have a com- 

 mixture, 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 more purely and exactly true than 

 histories of times, because they may choose an argu- 

 ment comprehensible within the notice and instructions 

 of the writer : whereas he that undertaketh the story 

 of a time, specially of any length, cannot but meet 

 with many blanks and spaces which he must be forced 

 to fill up out of his own wit and conjecture. 



6. For the history of times (I mean of civil history), 



G 



