88 ADVANCEMENT OP LEARNING. [bOOK IL 



of time, a memo rable 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 ex- 

 ternal shows and appearances to the people, and drop the 

 smaller passages and motions of men and things. Bu'. --is 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 in- 

 tersperses 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 repre- 

 sent 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 representation, and such as 

 is fitter for imitation. 



Particular relations of actions, as of th*^. 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 blanlis and empty 

 s[)aces, 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 the times of th** 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 transactions, they, by this 

 means, open the way to truth, which lies betwixt the two 

 fxtremes : so that, after the heat of contention is allayed, a 

 4;ood 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 unre- 

 corded, to the great prejudice, in point of honour and glory, 

 of those kingdoms and states wherein they passed. But to 

 omit other uatious, we have particular reason to complain to 



