Chapter VI (1)

Division of Civil History into Memoirs, Antiquities, and Perfect History

THIS civil history is of three kinds, and bears resemblance to three kinds of pictures; viz., the unfinished, the finished, and the defaced: thus civil history, which is the picture of times and things, appears in memoirs, just history, and antiquities; but memoirs are history begun, or the first strokes and materials of it; and antiquities are history defaced, or remnants that have escaped the shipwreck of time.

Memoirs, or memorials, are of two kinds; whereof the one may be termed commentaries, the other registers. In commentaries are set down naked events and actions in sequence, without the motives, designs, counsels, speeches, pretexts, occasions, etc.; for such is the true nature of a commentary, though Cæsar, in modesty mixed with greatness, called the best history in the world a commentary.

Registers are of two kinds; as either containing the titles of things and persons in order of time, by way of calendars and chronicles, or else after the manner of journals, preserving the edicts of princes, decrees of council, judicial proceedings, declarations, letters of state, and public orations, without continuing the thread of the narration.

Antiquities are the wrecks of history, wherein the memory of things is almost lost; or such particulars as industrious persons, with exact and scrupulous diligence, can any way collect from genealogies, calendars, titles, inscriptions, monuments, coins, names, etymologies, proverbs, traditions, archives, instruments, fragments of public and private history, scattered passages of books no way historical, etc.; by which means something is recovered from the deluge of time. This is a laborious work; yet acceptable to mankind, as carrying with it a kind of reverential awe, and deserves to come in the place of those fabulous and fictitious origins of nations we abound with; though it has the less authority, as but few have examined and exercised a liberty of thought about it.

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 reduced them to base and unprofitable dregs; whence all men of sound judgment declare the use of them ought to be banished.