II. (1) For civil history, it is of three kinds; 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 drafts of history; and antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

(2) 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 Caesar, 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.

(3) Antiquities, or remnants of history, are, as was said, tanquam tabula naufragii:  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.

(4) In these kinds of unperfect histories I do assign no deficience, for they are tanquam imperfecte mista; 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.

(5) 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