History, properly so called, may be described by the addition of those parts which are not required to annals; and therefore there is little farther to be said concerning it: only that the dignity and gravity of stile is here necessary. That the guesses of secret causes inducing to the actions, be drawn at least from the most probable circumstances, not perverted by the malignity of the author, to sinister interpretations; (of which Tacitus is accused) but candidly laid down, and left to the judgment of the reader: that nothing of concernment be omitted, but things of trivial moment are still to be neglected, as debasing the majesty of the work; that neither partiality nor prejudice appear, but that truth may every where be sacred. "Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat historicus"*. That he neither incline to superstition, in giving too much credit to oracles, prophecies, divinations and prodigies, nor to irreligion, in disclaiming the Almighty providence; but where general opinion has pre vailed of any miraculous accident or portent, he ought to relate it as such, without imposing his opinion on our belief.

Next to Thucydides, in this kind, may be reckoned Polybius, among the Greeks; Livy,

The historian should not dare to tell a falsehood, or to conceal a truth. A maxim drawn from Tacitus.

thought not free from superstition, nor Tacitus from ill nature, among the Romans; amongst the modern Italians, Guicciardini and Davila, if not partial; but above all, in my opinion, the plain, sincere, unaffected, and most instructive Philip de Comines, among the French, though he only gives his history the humble name of Commen taries. I am sorry I cannot find in our own nation, though it has produced some commendable historians, any proper to be ranked with these. Buchanan, indeed, for the purity of his Latin, and for his learning, and for all other endowments belonging to an historian, might be placed among the greatest, if he had not too much leaned to prejudice, and too manifestly declared himself a party to a cause, rather than an historian. Excepting only that, (which I desire not to urge too far on so great a man, but only to give caution to his readers concerning it,) our isle may justly boast in him a writer comparable to any of the moderns, and excelled by few of the antients.

Biography, or the history of particular men's lives, comes next to be considered; which in dignity is inferior to the other two, as being more confined in action, and treating of wars and counsels, and all other public affairs of nations, only as they relate to him whose life is written,

or as his fortunes have a particular dependance on them, or connection with them. All things are here circumscribed and driven to point, so

as to terminate in one: consequently, if the action or counsel were managed by colleagues, some part of it must be either lame or wanting, except it be supplied by the excursion of the writer. Herein, likewise, must be less of variety for the same reason, for the fortune and actions of one man are related, not those of many. Thus the actions and achievements of Sylla, Lucullus, and Pompey, are all of them but the successive parts of the Mithridatic war ; of which we could have no perfect image, if the same hand had not given us the whole, though at several times, in their particular lives.

Yet though we allow, for the reasons above alledged, that this kind of writing is in dignity inferior to history and annals, in pleasure or instruction it equals or even excels both of them. It is not only commended by antient practice, to celebrate the memory of great and worthy men, as the best thanks which posterity can pay them; but also the examples of virtue are of more vigour, when they are thus contracted into individuals. As the sun-beams united by a burningglass into a point, have greater force than when they are darted from a plain superficies; so the

virtues and actions of one man, drawn together into a single story, strike upon our minds a stronger and more lively impression, than the scattered relations of many men, and many actions; and by the same means that they give us pleasure, they afford us profit too. For when the understanding is intent, and fixed on a single thing, it carries closer to the mark, every part of the object sinks into it, and the soul receives it unmixed and whole. For this reason Aristotle commends the unity of action in a poem, because the mind is not capable of digesting many things at once, nor of conceiving fully any more than one idea at a time.

Whatsoever distracts the pleasure, lessens it; and as the reader is more concerned at one man's fortune, than those of many, so likewise the writer is more capable of making a perfect work, if he confine himself to this narrow compass. The lineaments, features, and colourings of a single piece, may be hit exactly; but in a history piece, of many figures, the general design, the ordonance or disposition, the relation of one figure to another, the diversity of the postures, habits, shadowings, and all the other graces conspiring to an uniformity, are of so difficult performance, that neither is the resemblance of particular persons often perfect, nor the beauty of the piece

complete; for any considerable error in the parts, renders the whole disagreeable and lame.

Thus, then, the perfection of the work and the benefit arising from it, are both more absolute in biography than in history. All history is only the precepts of moral philosophy, reduced into examples. Moral philosophy is divided into two parts, ethics, and politics; the first instructs us in our private offices of virtue, the second in those which relate to the management of the commonwealth. Both of these teach by argumentation and reasoning, which rush as it were into the mind, and possess it with violence, but history rather allures than forces us to virtue. There is nothing of the tyrant in example; but it gently glides into us, is easy and pleasant in its passage, and in one word, reduces into practice our speculative notions; therefore the more powerful the examples are, they are the more useful also; and by being more known they are more powerful. Now unity, which is defined, is in its own nature, more apt to be understood than multiplicity, which, in some measure, participates of infinity. The reason is Aristotle's. Biography, or the histories of particular lives, though circumscribed in the subject, is yet more extensive in the style than the other two; for it not only comprehends them both, but has some