forth the pomp of business than the true and inward resorts thereof.  But lives, if they be well written, 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 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, specially 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.

(6) 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 Graecia 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.

(7) Now to speak of the deficiences.  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 Graecia, from Theseus to Philopoemen (what time the affairs of Graecia 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, Caesar, 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 a matter of magnificence, rather to be commended than required; and we speak now of parts of learning supplemental, and not of supererogation.

(8) But for modern histories, whereof there are some few very worthy, but the greater part beneath mediocrity, leaving the care of foreign stories to foreign states, because I will not be curiosus in aliena republica, I cannot fail to represent to your Majesty the unworthiness of the history of England in the main continuance thereof, and the partiality and obliquity of that of Scotland in the latest and largest author that I have seen:  supposing that it would be honour for your Majesty, and a work very memorable, if this island