under one sceptre. Thus as massive bodies, drawn aside from their course, experience certain waverings and trepidations before they fix and settle, so this monarchy, before it was to settle in your Majesty and your heirs, in whom I hope it is established forever, seems by the providence of God to have undergone these mutations and deflections as a prelude to stability.

With regard to lives, we cannot but wonder that our own times have so little value for what they enjoy, as not more frequently to write the lives of eminent men. For though kings, princes, and great personages are few, yet there are many other excellent men who deserve better than vague reports and barren elogies. Here the fancy of a late poet, who has improved an ancient fiction, is not inapplicable. He feigns that at the end of the thread of every man's life, there hung a medal, on which the name of the deceased is stamped; and that Time, waiting upon the shears of the fatal sister, as soon as the thread was cut, caught the medals, and threw them out of his bosom into the river Lethe. He also represented many birds flying over its banks, who caught the medals in their beaks, and after carrying them about for a certain time, allowed them to fall in the river. Among these birds were a few swans, who used, if they caught a medal, to carry it to a certain temple consecrated to immortality. Such swans, however, are rare in our age. And although many, more mortal in their affections than their bodies, esteem the desire of fame and memory but a vanity, and despise praise, while they do nothing that is praiseworthy-"animos nil magnæ laudis egentes'';' yet their philosophy springs from the root, "non prius laudes contempsimus quam laudanda facere desivimus"; and does not alter Solomon's judgment "the memory of the just shall be with praises; but the name of the wicked shall rot"; the one flourishing, while the other consumes or turns to corruption. So in that laudable way of speaking

3 En. v. 751.

4 Prov. x. 7.

of the dead, "of happy memory! of pious memory!" etc., we seem to acknowledge, with Cicero and Demosthenes, "that a good name is the proper inheritance of the deceased'; which inheritance is lying waste in our time, and deserves to be noticed as a deficiency.

In the business of relations it is, also, to be wished that greater diligence were employed; for there is no signal action, but has some good pen to describe it. But very few being qualified to write a complete history, suitable to its dignity (a thing wherein so many have failed), if memorable acts were but tolerably related as they pass, this might lay the foundations, and afford materials for a complete history of times, when a writer should arise equal to the work.

CHAPTER VIII

Division of the History of Times into Universal and Particular. The Advantages and Disadvantages of both

Η

ISTORY of times is either general or particular, as

it relates the transactions of the whole world, or of a certain kingdom or nation. And there have been those who would seem to give us the history of the world from its origin; but, in reality, offer only a rude collection of things, and certain short narratives instead of a history; while others have nobly, and to good advantage, endeavored to describe, as in a just history, the memorable things, which in their time happened over all the globe. For human affairs are not so far divided by empires and countries, but that in many cases they still preserve a connection: whence it is proper enough to view, as in one picture, the fates of an age. And such a general history as this may frequently contain particular relations, which, though of value, might otherwise either be

5 Demosth. adv. Lept. 488.

lost, or never again reprinted: at least, the heads of such accounts may be thus preserved. But upon mature consideration, the laws of just history appear so severe as scarcely to be observed in so large a field of matter, whence the bulkiness of history should rather be retrenched than enlarged; otherwise, he who has such variety of matter everywhere to collect, if he preserve not constantly the strictest watch upon his informations, will be apt to take up with rumors and popular reports, and work such kind of superficial matter into his history. And, then, to retrench the whole, he will be obliged to pass over many things otherwise worthy of relation, and often to contract and shorten his style; wherein there lies no small danger of frequently cutting off useful narrations, in order to oblige mankind in their favorite way of compendium; whence such accounts, which might otherwise live of themselves, may come to be utterly lost.

CHAPTER IX

Second Division of the History of Times into Annals and Journals

H

ISTORY of times is likewise divisible into annals

and journals, according to the observation of Tacitus, where, mentioning the magnificence of certain structures, he adds, "It was found suitable to the Roman dignity that illustrious things should be committed to annals, but such as these to the public journals of the city";" thus referring what related to the state of the common wealth to annals, and smaller matters to journals. And so there should be a kind of heraldry in regulating the dignities of books as well as persons: for as nothing takes more from the dignity of a state than confusion of orders and degrees, so it greatly takes from the authority of history to intermix

1 Annals, xiii, 31.

matters of triumph, ceremony, and novelty, with matters of state. And it were to be wished that this distinction prevailed; but in our times journals are only used at sea and in military expeditions, whereas among the ancients it was a regal honor to have the daily acts of the palace recorded, as we see in the case of Ahasuerus, king of Persia.' And the journals of Alexander the Great contained even trivial matters; yet journals are not destined for trivial things alone, as annals are for serious ones, but contain all things promiscuously, whether of greater or of less concern.

CHAPTER X

Second Division of Special Civil History into Pure and Mixed

HE last division of civil history is into pure and

mixed. Of the mixed there are two eminent kinds -the one principally civil, and the other principally natural: for a kind of writing has been introduced that does not give particular narrations in the continued thread of a history, but where the writer collects and culls them, with choice, out of an author, then reviewing and as it were ruminating upon them, takes occasion to treat of political subjects; and this kind of ruminated history we highly esteem, provided the writers keep close to it professedly, for it is both unseasonable and irksome to have an author profess he will write a proper history, yet at every turn introduce politics, and thereby break the thread of his narration. All wise history is indeed pregnant with political rules and precepts, but the writer is not to take all opportunities of delivering himself of them.

Cosmographical history is also mixed many ways-as taking the descriptions of countries, their situations and

? Esther vi. 1.

3 Plutarch's Symposium, i. qu. 6 and Alex. Life, xxiii. 76.

fruits, from natural history; the accounts of cities, governments, and manners, from civil history; the climates and astronomical phenomena, from mathematics: in which kind of history the present age seems to excel, as having a full view of the world in this light. The ancients had some knowledge of the zones and antipodes

"Nosque ubi primus equis oriens afflavit anhelis,

Illic sera rubens accendit lumina vesper" —

though rather by abstract demonstration than fact. But that little vessels, like the celestial bodies, should sail round the whole globe, is the happiness of our age. These times, moreover, may justly use not only plus ultra where the ancients used non plus ultra, but also imitabile fulmen where the ancients said non imitabile fulmen

113

"Demens qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen." "

This improvement of navigation may give us great hopes of extending and improving the sciences, especially as it seems agreeable to the Divine will that they should be coeval. Thus the prophet Daniel foretells, that "Many shall go to and fro on the earth, and knowledge shall be increased, as if the openness and thorough passage of the world and the increase of knowledge were allotted to the same age, which indeed we find already true in part: for the learning of these times scarce yields to the former periods or returns of learning-the one among the Greeks and the other among the Romans, and in many particulars far exceeds them.

1 Virgil, Georgics, i. 251. 2 Virgil, Eneid, vi. 590.

3 Dan. xii. 4.