discovered, and of acquiring infamy whilst they seek for fame; or else attached to truth upon a nobler and surer principle. It is certain that these, even the last of them, are fallible. Bribed by some passion or other, the former may venture now and then to propagate a falsehood, or to disguise the truth; like the painter that drew in profile, as Lucian says, the picture of a prince that had but one eye. Montaigne objects to the memorials of Du Bellay, that though the gross of the facts be truly related, yet these authors turned everything they mentioned to the advantage of their master, and mentioned nothing which could not be so turned. The old fellow's words are worth quoting.-' De contour'ner le jugement des evenemens souvent contre raison à notre avan'tage, et d'obmettre tout ce qu'il y a de chatouilleux en la vie de leur 'maitre, ils en font mestier.' These, and such as these, deviate occasionally and voluntarily from truth; but even they who are attached to it the most religiously, may slide sometimes into involuntary error. In matters of history we prefer very justly cotemporary authority, and yet cotemporary authors are the most liable to be warped from the strait rule of truth, in writing on subjects which have affected them strongly, et quorum pars magna fuerunt. I am so persuaded of this, from what I have felt in myself, and observed in others, that if life and health enough fall to my share, and I am able to finish what I meditate, -a kind of history from the late queen's accession to the throne to the peace of Utrecht,-there will be no materials that I shall examine more scrupulously and severely than those of the time when the events to be spoken of were in transaction. But though the writers of these two sorts, both of whom pay as much regard to truth as the various infirmities of our nature admit, are fallible; yet this fallibility will not be sufficient to give colour to Pyrrhonism. Where their sincerity as to fact is doubtful, we strike out truth by the confrontation of different accounts, as we strike out sparks of fire by the collision of flints and steel. Where their judgments are suspicious of partiality, we may judge for ourselves; or adopt their judgments after weighing them with certain grains of allowance. A little natural sagacity will proportion these grains according to the particular circumstances of the authors, or their general characters, for even these influence. Thus Montaigne pretends, but he exaggerates a little, that Guicciardin nowhere ascribes✓ any one action to a virtuous, but every one to a vicious principle. Something like this has been reproached to Tacitus, and notwithstanding all the sprightly loose observations of Montaigne in one of his essays where he labours to prove the contrary, read Plutarch's comparisons in what language you please, I am of Bodin's mind, you will perceive that they were made by a Greek. In short, my lord, the favourable opportunities of corrupting history have been often interrupted, and are now over in so many countries, that truth penetrates even into those where lying continues still to be part of the policy 32 FEW HISTORIANS CAN BE WHOLLY RELIED UPON. ecclesiastical and civil; or where, to say the best we can say, truth is never suffered to appear, till she has passed through hands out of which she seldom returns entire and undefiled. But it is time I should conclude this head, under which I have touched some of those reasons that show the folly of endeavouring to establish universal Pyrrhonism in matters of history, because there are few histories without some lies, and none without some mistakes; and that prove the body of history which we possess, since ancient memorials have been so critically examined, and modern memorials have been so multiplied, to contain in it such a probable series of events, easily distinguishable from the improbable, as force the assent of every man who is in his senses, and are therefore sufficient to answer all the purposes of the study of history. I might have appealed perhaps, without entering into the argument at all, to any man of candour, whether his doubts concerning the truth of history have hindered him from applying the examples he has met with in it, and from judging of the present, and sometimes of the future, by the past? Whether he has not been touched with reverence and admiration, at the virtue and wisdom of some men, and of some ages, and whether he has not felt indignation and contempt for others? whether Epaminondas or Phocion, for instance, the Decii or the Scipios, have not raised in his mind a flame of public spirit and private virtue ? and whether he has not shuddered with horror at the proscriptions of Marius and Sylla, at the treachery of Theodotus and Achillas, and at the consummate cruelty of an infant king? 'Quis non contra Marii 'arma, et contra Syllæ proscriptionem concitatur? Quis non Theodoto, 'et Achillae, et ipsi puero, non puerile auso facinus, infestus est?' If this be a digression, your lordship will excuse it. II. What has been said concerning the multiplicity of histories, and of historical memorials, wherewith our libraries abound since the resurrection of letters happened and the art of printing began, puts me in mind of another general rule, that ought to be observed by every man who intends to make a real improvement, and to become wiser as well as better, by the study of history. I hinted at this rule in a former letter, where I said that we should neither grope in the dark nor wander in the light. History must have a certain degree of probability and authenticity, or the examples we find in it will not carry a force sufficient to make due impressions on our minds, nor to illustrate nor to strengthen the precepts of philosophy and the rules of good policy. But besides, when histories have this necessary authenticity and probability, there is much discernment to be employed in the choice and the use we make of them. Some are to be read, some are to be studied; and some may be neglected entirely, not only without detriment, but with advantage. Some are the proper objects of one man's curiosity, some of others, and some of all men's; but all history is not an object of curiosity for any man. He who improperly, wantonly, and absurdly makes it so, indulges a sort of canine appetite: the curiosity of one, like the hunger of the other, devours ravenously and without distinction whatever falls in its way; but neither of them digests. They heap crudity upon crudity, and nourish and improve nothing but their distemper. Some such characters I have known, though it is not the most common extreme into which men are apt to fall. One of them I knew in this country. He joined to a more than athletic strength of body, a prodigious memory; and to both a prodigious industry. He had read almost constantly twelve or fourteen hours a day, for five and twenty or thirty years; and had heaped together as much learning as could be crowded into a head. In the course of my acquaintance with him, I consulted him once or twice, not oftener; for I found this mass of learning of as little use to me as to the owner. The man was communicative enough, but nothing was distinct in his mind. How could it be otherwise? He had never spared time to think, all was employed in reading. His reason had not the merit of common mechanism. When you press a watch or pull a clock, they answer your question with precision; for they repeat exactly the hour of the day, and tell you neither more nor less than you desire to know. But when you asked this man a question, he overwhelmed you by pouring forth all that the several terms or words of your question recalled to his memory; and if he omitted anything, it was that very thing to which the sense of the whole question should have led him and confined him. To ask him a question, was to wind up a spring in his memory, that rattled on with vast rapidity, and confused noise, till the force of it was spent ; and you went away with all the noise in your ears, stunned and uninformed. I never left him that I was not ready to say to him, 'Dieu vous fasse la grace de devenir moins savant!' a wish that La Mothe le Vayer mentions upon some occasion or other, and that he would have done well to have applied to himself upon many. He who reads with discernment and choice, will acquire less learning, but more knowledge: and as this knowledge is collected with design, and cultivated with art and method, it will be at all times of immediate and ready use to himself and others. Thus useful arms in magazines we place, All ranged in order, and disposed with grace: But to be found, when need requires, with ease. You remember the verses, my lord, in our friend's essay on criticism, which was the work of his childhood almost; but is such a monument of good sense and poetry as no other that I know has raised in his riper years. 34 WHAT SHOULD BE THE DRIFT OF PHILOSOPHIC SPECULATIONS. He who reads without this discernment and choice, and, like Bodin's pupil, resolves to read all, will not have time, no nor capacity neither, to do anything else. He will not be able to think, without which it is impertinent to read; nor to act, without which it is impertinent to think. He will assemble materials with much pain, and purchase them at much expense, and have neither leisure nor skill to frame them into proper scantlings, or to prepare them for use. To what purpose should he husband his time, or learn architecture? he has no design to build. But then to what purpose all these quarries of stone, all these mountains of sand and lime, all these forests of oak and deal? Magno impendio temporum, magna alienarum aurium molestiâ, 'laudatio hæc constat, O hominem litteratum ! Simus hoc titulo 'rusticiore contenti, O virum bonum !' We may add, and Seneca might have added in his own style, and according to the manners and characters of his own age, another title as rustic, and as little in fashion, 'O virum sapientiâ sua simplicem, et simplicitate sua sapien'tem! O virum utilem, sibi, sui~, reipublicæ, et humano generi !' I have said perhaps already, but no matter, it cannot be repeated too often, that the drift of all philosophy, and of all political speculations, ought to be the making us better men and better citizens. Those studies, which have no intention towards improving our moral cha6 racters, have no pretence to be styled philosophical. Quis est enim,' says Tully in his offices, 'qui nullis officii præceptis tradendis, philosophum se audeat dicere?' Whatever political speculation, instead of preparing us to be useful to society and to promote the happiness of mankind, are only systems for gratifying private ambition, and promoting private interests at the public expense; all such, I say, deserve to be burnt, and the authors of them to starve, like Machiavel, in a jail. LETTER V. I. The great use of history, properly so called, as distinguished from the writings of mere annalists and antiquaries.—II. Greek and Roman historians.-III. Some idea of a complete history.—IV. Further cautions to be observed in this study, and the regulation of it according to the different professions and situations of men : above all, the use to be made of it (1) by divines, and (2) by those who are called to the service of their country. I REMEMBER my last letter ended abruptly, and a long interval has since passed: so that the thread I had then spun has slipt from me. I will try to recover it, and to pursue the task your lordship has obliged me to continue. Besides the pleasure of obeying your orders, it is likewise of some advantage to myself, to recollect my thoughts, and resume a study in which I was conversant formerly. For nothing can be more true than that saying of Solon reported by Plato, though censured by him impertinently enough in one of his wild books of laws-Assiduè addiscens, ad senium venio. The truth is, the most knowing man in the course of the longest life, will have always much to learn, and the wisest and best much to improve. This rule will hold in the knowledge and improvement to be acquired by the study of history and therefore even he who has gone to this school in his youth, should not neglect it in his age. I read in Livy,' says Montaigne, 'what another man does not: and Plutarch read there 'what I do not.' Just so the same man may read at fifty what he did not read in the same book at five and twenty at least I have found it so by my own experience on many occasions. By comparing, in this study, the experience of other men and other ages with our own, we improve both: we analyse, as it were, philosophy, We reduce all the abstract speculations of ethics, and all the general rules of human policy, to their first principles. With these advantages every man may, though few men do, advance daily towards those ideas, those increated essences a Platonist would say, which no human creature can reach in practice, but in the nearest approaches to which the perfection of our nature consists; because every approach of this kind renders a man better and wiser, for himself, for his family, for the little community of his own country, and for the great community of the world. Be not surprised, my lord, at the order in which I place these objects. Whatever order divines and moralists, who contemplate the duties belonging to these objects, may place them in, this is the order they hold in nature: and I have always thought that we might lead ourselves and others to private virtue, more effectually by a due observation of this order, than by any of those sublime refinements that pervert it. 'Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace, So sings our friend Pope, my lord, and so I believe. So I shall prove, too, if I mistake not, in an epistle I am about to write to him, in order to complete a set that were written some years ago. A man of my age, who returns to the study of history, has no time to lose, because he has little to live; a man of your lordship's age has no time to lose, because he has much to do. For different reasons therefore the same rules will suit us. Neither of us must grope in the |