tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">{53b} the death of Nicias, their violent thirst, the water which they drank, and the death of so many of them whilst they were drinking it.  He will imagine (which will certainly be the case) that no man in his senses will blame him for recording things exactly as they fell out.  However some may have miscarried by imprudence, or others by ill fortune, he is only the relator, not the author of them.  If they are beaten in a sea-fight, it is not he who sinks them; if they fly, it is not he who pursues them; all he can do is to wish well to, and offer up his vows for them; but by passing over or contradicting facts, he cannot alter or amend them.  It would have been very easy indeed for Thucydides, with a stroke of his pen, to have thrown down the walls of Epipolis, sunk the vessel of Hermocrates, or made an end of the execrable Gylippus, who stopped up all the avenues with his walls and ditches; to have thrown the Syracusans on the Lautumiæ, and have let the Athenians go round Sicily and Italy, according to the early hopes of Alcibiades: but what is past and done Clotho cannot weave again, nor Atropos recall.

The only business of the historian is to relate things exactly as they are: this he can never do as long as he is afraid of Artaxerxes, whose physician {55a} he is; as long as he looks for the purple robe, the golden chain, or the Nisæan horse, {55b} as the reward of his labours; but Xenophon, that just writer, will not do this, nor Thucydides.  The good historian, though he may have private enmity against any man, will esteem the public welfare of more consequence to him, and will prefer truth to resentment; and, on the other hand, be he ever so fond of any man, will not spare him when he is in the wrong; for this, as I before observed, is the most essential thing in history, to sacrifice to truth alone, and cast away all care for everything else.  The great universal rule and standard is, to have regard not to those who read now, but to those who are to peruse our works hereafter.

To speak impartially, the historians of former times were too often guilty of flattery, and their works were little better than games and sports, the effects of art.  Of Alexander, this memorable saying is recorded: “I should be glad,” said he, “Onesicritus, after my death, to come to life again for a little time, only to hear what the people then living will say of me; for I am not surprised that they praise and caress me now, as every one hopes by baiting well to catch my favour.”  Though Homer wrote a great many fabulous things concerning Achilles, the world was induced to believe him, for this only reason, because they were written long after his death, and no cause could be assigned why he should tell lies about him.

The good historian, {56} then, must be thus described: he must be fearless, uncorrupted, free, the friend of truth and of liberty; one who, to use the words of the comic poet, calls a fig a fig, {57a} and a skiff a skiff, neither giving nor withholding from any, from favour or from enmity, not influenced by pity, by shame, or by remorse; a just judge, so far benevolent to all as never to give more than is due to any in his work; a stranger to all, of no country, bound only by his own laws, acknowledging no sovereign, never considering what this or that man may say of him, but relating faithfully everything as it happened.

This rule therefore Thucydides observed, distinguishing properly the faults and perfections of history: not unmindful of the great reputation which Herodotus had acquired, insomuch that his books were called by the names of the Muses. {57b}  Thucydides tells us that he “wrote for posterity, and not for present delight; that he by no means approved of the fabulous, but was desirous of delivering down the truth alone to future ages.”  It is the useful, he adds, which must constitute the merit of history, that by the retrospection of what is past, when similar events occur, men may know how to act in present exigencies.

Such an historian would I wish to have under my care: with regard to language and expression, I would not have it rough and vehement, consisting of long periods, {58} or complex arguments; but soft, quiet, smooth, and peaceable.  The reflections, short and frequent, the style clear and perspicuous; for as freedom and truth should be the principal perfections of the writer’s mind, so, with regard to language, the great point is to make everything plain and intelligible, not to use remote and far-fetched phrases or expressions, at the same time avoiding such as are mean and vulgar: let it be, in short, what the lowest may understand; and, at the same time, the most learned cannot but approve.  The whole may be adorned with figure and metaphor, provided they are not turgid or bombast, nor seem stiff and laboured, which, like meat too highly seasoned, always give disgust.

History may sometimes assume a poetical form, and rise into a magnificence of expression, when the subject demands it; and especially when it is describing armies, battles, and sea-fights.  The Pierian spirit {59} is wanting then to swell the sails with a propitious breeze, and carry the lofty ship over the tops of the waves.  In general, the diction should creep humbly on the ground, and only be raised as the grand and beautiful occurring shall require it; keeping, in the meantime, within proper bounds, and never soaring into enthusiasm; for then it is in danger of ranging beyond its limits, into poetic fury: we must then pull in the rein and act with caution, well knowing that it is the worst vice of a writer, as well as of a horse, to be wanton and unmanageable.  The best way therefore is, whilst the mind of the historian is on horseback, for his style to walk on foot, and take hold of the rein, that it may not be left behind.

With regard to composition, the words should not be so blended and transposed as to appear harsh and uncouth; nor should you, as some do, subject them entirely to the rhythmus; {60} one is always faulty, and the other disagreeable to the reader.

Facts must not be carelessly put together, but with great labour and attention.  If possible, let the historian be an eye-witness of everything he means to record; or, if that cannot be, rely on those only who are incorrupt, and who have no bias from passion or prejudice, to add or to diminish anything.  And here much sagacity will be requisite to find out the real truth.  When he has collected all or most of his materials, he will first make a kind of diary, a body whose members are not yet distinct; he will then bring it into order and beautify it, add the colouring of style and