Chapter VII

Division of History into Chronicles, Biographies, and Perfect Relations. The Development of their parts

JUST history is of three kinds, with regard to the three objects it designs to represent; which are either a portion of time, a memorable 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 external shows and appearances to the people, and drop the smaller passages and motions of men and things. But as 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 intersperses 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 represent 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 the 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, while they who undertake the history of any large portion of time must need meet with blanks and empty spaces, 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 the 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 between the two extremes: so that, after the heat of contention is allayed, a good 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 unrecorded, to the great prejudice, in point of honor and glory, of those kingdoms and states wherein they passed. But to omit other nations, we have particular reason to complain to your Majesty of the imperfection of the present history of England, in the main continuance of it, and the partiality and obliquity of that of Scotland, in the most copious and recent account that has been left us. As this island of Great Britain will now, as one united monarchy, descend to future ages, we cannot but deem it a work alike honorable to your Majesty, and grateful to posterity, that exploits were collected in one history, in the style of the ancient Testament, which hands down the story of the ten tribes and the two tribes as twins together. If the greatness of the undertaking, however, should prove any obstacle to its perfect execution, a shorter period of time, fraught with the greatest interest, occurs from the junction of the Roses to the union of the two kingdoms—a space of time which to me appears to contain a crowd of more memorable events than ever occurred in any hereditary monarchy of similar duration. For it commences with the conjoint adoption of a crown by arms, and title, an entry by battle, and a marriage settlement. The times which follow, partaking of the nature of such beginnings, like waters after a tempest, full of workings and swellings, though without boisterous storms, being well navigated by the wisdom of the pilot, one of the most able of his predecessors. Then succeeded the reign of a king, whose policy, though rather actuated by passion than counsel, exercised great influence upon the courts of Europe, balancing and variably inclining their various interests; in whose time, also, began that great change of religion, an action seldom brought on the stage. Then the reign of a minor. Then an attempt at usurpation, though it was but as a “febris ephemera”: then the reign of a queen, matched with a foreigner: then the reign of a queen, solitary and unmarried. And now, as a close, the glorious and auspicious event of the union of an island, divided from the rest of the world: so that we may say the old oracle which gave rest to Æneas, “antiquam exquirite matrem,” is fulfilled in the union of England and Scotland 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 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.