strangeness. But a substantial and severe collection of the Heteroclites or Irregulars of nature, well examined and described, I find not; specially not with due rejection of fables and popular errors: for as things now are, if an untruth in nature be once on foot, what by reason of the neglect of examination and countenance of antiquity, and what by reason of the use of the opinion in similitudes and ornaments of speech, it is never called down.

The use of this work, honoured with a precedent in Aristotle', is nothing less than to give contentment to the appetite of curious and vain wits, as the manner of Mirabilaries is to do; but for two reasons, both of great weight; the one to correct the partiality of axioms and opinions, which are commonly framed only upon common and familiar examples; the other because from the wonders of nature is the nearest intelligence and passage towards the wonders of art: for it is no more but by following and as it were hounding Nature in her wanderings, to be able to lead her afterwards to the same place again. Neither am I of opinion, in this History of Marvels, that superstitious narrations of sorceries, witchcrafts, dreams, divinations, and the like, where there is an assurance and clear evidence of the fact, be altogether excluded. For it is not yet known in what cases, and how far, effects attributed to superstition do participate of natural causes; and therefore howsoever the practice of such things is to be condemned, yet from the speculation and consideration of them light may be taken, not only for the discerning of the offences, but for the further disclosing of nature. Neither ought a man to make scruple of entering into these things for inquisition of truth, as your Majesty hath shewed in your own example; who with the two clear eyes of religion. and natural philosophy have looked deeply and wisely into these shadows, and yet proved yourself to be of the nature of the sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before. But this I hold fit, that these narrations which have mixture with superstition be sorted by themselves, and not to be mingled with the narrations which are merely and sincerely natural. But as for the narrations touching the

1 De Miris Auscultationibus; which is now however generally admitted to be not Aristotle's. R. L. E. See De Aug. ii. 2. Mr. Blakesley is of opinion that the nucleus of it was probably Aristotle's, but that it has been added to by subsequent writers.

Historia

prodigies and miracles of religions, they are either not true or not natural; and therefore impertinent for the story of nature. For History of Nature Wrought or Mechanical, I find some collections made of agriculture, and likewise of Mechanica, manual arts; but commonly with a rejection of experiments familiar and vulgar. For it is esteemed a kind of dishonour unto learning to descend to inquiry or meditation upon matters mechanical, except they be such as may be thought secrets, rarities, and special subtilties; which humour of vain and supercilious arrogancy is justly derided in Plato; where he brings in Hippias, a vaunting sophist, disputing with Socrates, a true and unfeigned inquisitor of truth; where the subject being touching beauty, Socrates, after his wandering manner of inductions, put first an example of a fair virgin, and then of a fair horse, and then of a fair pot well glazed, whereat Hippias was offended, and said, More than for courtesy's sake, he did think much to dispute with any that did allege such base and sordid instances: whereunto Socrates answereth, You have reason, and it becomes you well, being a man so trim in your vestiments, &c. and so goeth on in an irony. But the truth is, they be not the highest instances that give the securest information; as may be well expressed in the tale so common of the philosopher, that while he gazed upwards to the stars fell into the water; for if he had looked down he might have seen the stars in the water, but looking aloft he could not see the water in the stars. So it cometh often to pass that mean and small things discover great better than great can discover the small; and therefore Aristotle noteth well, that the nature of every thing is best seen in his smallest portions, and for that cause he inquireth the nature of a commonwealth, first in a family, and the simple conjugations of man and wife, parent and child, master and servant, which are in every cottage: even so likewise the nature of this great city of the world and the policy thereof must be first sought in mean concordances and small portions. So we see how that secret of nature, of the turning of iron touched with the loadstone towards the north, was found out in needles of iron, not in bars of iron.

But if my judgment be of any weight, the use of History Mechanical is of all others the most radical and fundamental towards natural philosophy; such natural philosophy as shall not vanish in the fume of subtile, sublime, or delectable spccu

lation, but such as shall be operative to the endowment and benefit of man's life: for it will not only minister and suggest for the present many ingenious practices in all trades, by a connexion and transferring of the observations of one art to the use of another, when the experiences of several mysteries shall fall under the consideration of one man's mind; but further it will give a more true and real illumination concerning causes and axioms than is hitherto attained. For like as a man's disposition is never well known till he be crossed, nor Proteus ever changed shapes till he was straitened and held fast; so the passages and variations of nature cannot appear so fully in the liberty of nature, as in the trials and vexations of art.'

¶2 For Civil History, it is of three kinds 3; not unfitly to be compared with the three kinds of pictures or images. For of pictures or images, we see some are unfinished, some are perfect, and some are defaced. So of histories we may find three kinds, Memorials, Perfect Histories, and Antiquities; for Memorials are history unfinished, or the first or rough draughts of history, and Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwrack of time.

Memorials, or Preparatory History, are of two sorts; whereof the one may be termed Commentaries, and the other Registers. Commentaries are they which set down a continuance of the naked events and actions, without the motives or designs, the counsels, the speeches, the pretexts, the occasions, and other passages of action: for this is the true nature of a Commentary; though Cæsar, in modesty mixed with greatness, did for his pleasure apply the name of a Commentary to the best history of the world. Registers are collections of public acts, as decrees of council, judicial proceedings, declarations and letters of estate, orations, and the like, without a perfect continuance or contexture of the thread of the narration.

A paragraph is added in the translation, to say that not the mechanical arts only but also the practical part of the liberal sciences, as well as many crafts which have not grown into formal arts (such, he means, as hunting, fishing, &c.), are to be included in the History Mechanical.

2 De Aug. ii. 6. The 3rd chapter, concerning the two uses of natural history, and the 5th concerning the dignity and difficulty of civil history, have nothing corresponding to them here.

"I am not altogether ignorant in the laws of history and of the kinds. The same hath been taught by many, but by no man better and with greater brevity than by that excellent learned gentleman Sir Francis Bacon."-Ralegh: Preface to the History of the World. R. L. E.

purfite in the original; the form in which the word was commonly written in Bacon's time.

Antiquities or Remnants of History are, as was said, tanquam tabula naufragii, [like the planks of a shipwreck ;] when industrious persons by an exact and scrupulous diligence and observation, out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of books that concern not story, and the like, do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time.

In these kinds of unperfect histories I do assign no deficience, for they are tanquam imperfecte mista, [things imperfectly compounded;] and therefore any deficience in them is but their nature. As for the corruptions and moths of history, which are Epitomes, the use of them deserveth to be banished, as all men of sound judgment have confessed; as those that have fretted and corroded the sound bodies of many excellent histories, and wrought them into base and unprofitable dregs.

'History which may be called Just and Perfect History is of three kinds, according to the object which it propoundeth, or pretendeth to represent: for it either representeth a Time, or a Person, or an Action. The first we call Chronicles, the second Lives, and the third Narrations or Relations. Of these, although the first be the most complete and absolute kind of history and hath most estimation and glory, yet the second excelleth it in profit and use, and the third in verity and sincerity. For History of Times representeth the magnitude of actions and the public faces and deportments of persons, and passeth over in silence the smaller passages and motions of men and matters. But such being the workmanship of God as he doth hang the greatest weight upon the smallest wires, maxima e minimis suspendens, it comes therefore to pass, that such histories do rather set forth the pomp of business than the true and inward resorts thereof. But Lives, if they be well written 3, propounding to themselves a person to represent in whom actions both greater and smaller, public and private, have a commixture, must of necessity contain a more true, native, and lively representation. So again Narrations and Relations of actions, as the War of Peloponnesus, the Expedition of Cyrus

1 De Aug. ii. 7.

2

2 And even (he adds in the translation) where they attempt to give the counsels and motives, yet still out of the same love of dignity and greatness they introduce into men's actions more gravity and wisdom than they really have; insomuch that you may find a truer picture of human life in some satires than in such histories.

i. e. not mere eulogies. The translation adds: "neque enim de elogiis et hujusmodi commemorationibus jejunis loquimur."

Minor, the Conspiracy of Catiline, cannot but be more purely and exactly true than Histories of Times, because they may choose an argument comprehensible within the notice and instructions of the writer: whereas he that undertaketh the story of a time, especially of any length, cannot but meet with many blanks and spaces which he must be forced to fill up out of his own wit and conjecture.'

For the History of Times, (I mean of civil history) the providence of God hath made the distribution: for it hath pleased God to ordain and illustrate two exemplar states of the world, for arms, learning, moral virtue, policy, and laws; the state of Græcia, and the state of Rome; the histories whereof occupying the middle part of time, have more ancient to them, histories which may by one common name be termed the Antiquities of the World; and after them, histories which may be likewise called by the name of Modern History.2

Now to speak of the deficiencies. As to the Heathen Antiquities of the world, it is in vain to note them for deficient. Deficient they are no doubt, consisting most of fables and fragments; but the deficience cannot be holpen; for antiquity is like fame, caput inter nubila condit, her head is muffled from our sight. For the History of the Exemplar States, it is extant in good perfection. Not but I could wish there were a perfect course of history for Græcia from Theseus to Philopomen, (what time the affairs of Græcia drowned and extinguished in the affairs of Rome ;) and for Rome from Romulus to Justinianus, who may be truly said to be ultimus Romanorum. In which sequences of story the text of Thucydides and Xenophon in the one, and the texts of Livius, Polybius, Sallustius, Cæsar, Appianus, Tacitus, Herodianus in the other, to be kept entire without any diminution at all, and only to be supplied and continued. But this is matter of magnificence, rather to be com

'On the other hand it must be confessed (he reminds us in the translation,—1 give only the general import of the passage, which is of considerable length) that relations of this kind, especially if published near the time to which they refer, are in one respect of all narratives the most to be suspected; being commonly written either in favour or in spite. But then again it seldom happens that they are all on one side, so that the extreme views of each party being represented, an honest and judicious historian may, when the violence of faction has cooled down with time, find the truth among them.

2 This paragraph and the next are omitted in the translation, and their place supplied by a general complaint that very many particular histories are still wanting; much to the injury in honour and reputation of the kingdoms and commonwealths which they concern.