ROBERT JOHNSON

OF HISTORIES

HISTORY is the mixture of profit and delight, the seasoning of more serious study, the reporter of cases adjudged by event, the interlude of our haps, the image of our present fortune, the compendiary director of our affairs, by which valor is quickened, judgment ripened, and resolution entertained.

Here are the reasons why some estates live quietly, others turmoiled in continual disturbances; some flourish by the delights of peace, others by continuing war; some spend lavishly without profit, others sparingly with honor. Here we may see ruins without fear, dangerous wars without peril, the customs of all nations without expense. By this observation of noting causes and effects, counsels and successes, likeness between nature and nature, action and action, fortune and fortune, is obtained that wisdom which teacheth us to deliberate with ripeness of judgment, to persevere in things deliberated, to execute with readiness, to temporize with inconveniences, to abide adversity, to moderate prosperity, to know the Scriptures, but in such sort that neither superstition make us vainly fearful, nor neglect cause us to be contemptuously presuming. And by opening to us the plots which give life to all the actions, it teacheth more thany twenty men living successively can learn by practice; as the general, by seeing the counsels which govern the event, must necessarily profit more than the soldier, who not able to search into the causes, perceiveth only the naked events.

But as histories are divers, so their operation in benefiting the perusers are divers. In some, as it were in Cleanthes' Table, virtue is set out in her best ornaments, as in the describing of famous battles, where specious wars, the ruin of nations, the situation of countries, the uncertain traverses of fortune, the death of brave commanders, have a certain kind of majesty linked with delight, and the mind by conversing in them is not only delighted, but also lifted up with spirit of better resolution and raised to think of imitating. These fill a man with better courage, but fail in enabling him for the manage of civil actions. Another kind there is like labyrinths, relating cunning and deceitful friendships, how rage is suppressed with silence, treason disguised in innocence, how the wealthy have been proscribed for their riches, and the worthy undermined for their virtue. These provoke us to eschew their vilety and lack of virtue, and to be rather viceless then greatly virtuous; and although they be distasted by those who measure history by delight, yet they are of most use in instructing the mind to the like accidents. And sithence men prostituting their wits to all hopeful ends of gain are ready to adventure themselves in the like actions, they are the most necessary things that can be warned us, to the intent that in the like practices we may seek means of prevention and frustrate all the attempts of such subtle evil companions.

In this rank I prefer Tacitus as the best that any man can dwell upon. He showeth the miseries of a torn and declining state where it was a capital crime to be virtuous, and nothing so unsafe as to be securely innocent; where great men's gestures were particularly interpreted, their actions aggravated and construed to proceed from aspiring intent and the prince, too sus

piciously jealous touching points of concurrency, suppressed men of great desert as competitors with them in that chiefest ground, the love of the people; when princes rather delighted in the vices of their subjects, either because every man is pleased with his own disposition in another or because by a secret of long use they thought those would most patiently endure servitude, whose contemptible manners and vilety might excuse their base subjection. He showeth how informers, men of desperate ambition, sharp-sighted in spying faults and cunning in amplifying occasions of dislike, forswear all honesty, redeeming the security of their own persons with the loss of good name and living on the vices of men, scarabs on ulcerous sores; how vain men were preferred to be treasurers, that they might fall with their proper vanities and want of government, being used like sponges, which after they had been wet with the spoils and extortions, were crushed and condemned, that their long-gathered wealth might return to the prince's coffers.

Here some infer that the knowledge of evil doth induce and draw men to effect, that the imitation of an evil doth alway excel the precedent in height of mischief, but the following of virtue doth scarce equalize the example in any degree of goodness, that the conversing in Tacitus doth deter men from doing worthily, where are Canii, Senecae, Sorani, Aruntii, men of admirable virtues in so corrupt a government, overliving their prosperity and dying like traitors in the same age when Sejanus, an impudent informer, strangely compounded of the two contrarieties of pride and flattery, in show modest and therefore more dangerously aspiring, swayeth the fortunes of men at his pleasure and by lucky passing through mischievous devices is

grown ferox scoeleris,1 and emboldened in his treacheries. But yet these men ought to remember that those mischiefs are but mischiefs to a baser mind, quemcunque fortem videris, miserum neges; that although they were oppressed, yet they remained still superiors, governors of necessity, rather directing than obeying the vexations. And I will not deny but such corrupt minds may also suck venom out of the most wholesome flowers, and armed with some dangerous positions out of the treasure of books, may like poison mingled with the best wine, more forcibly hurt by training on their mischievous purposes more cunningly. But yet methinks men have great incitements to hold themselves up in virtue by seeing evil men so contemptuously set forth, quaking with the inner upbraidings of conscience, not entertaining sleep, but disquieted with a continual tormenting execution. We may learn also to praise God for our gracious sovereign, under whose peaceful reign we are secured from all those miseries and enjoy all those benefits whose worth we shall know when we suffer privation of them, under whom our subjection is to the law, our service observation, our obedience a care not to offend.

In Tacitus are three notes which are required in a perfect history: first, truth in sincerely relating without having any thing haustum ex vano; 3 secondly, explanation in discovering not only the sequel of things, but also the causes and reasons; thirdly, judgment in distinguishing things by approving the best and disallowing the contrary. But yet he performeth this with such an art hiding art, as if he were aliud agens1 by

1 Ferocious in crime.-TACITUS, Annals, IV, 12.

2 When you perceive that a man is brave, you cannot declare that he is wretched.-SENECA, Hercules Furens, 464.

3 Drawn from a vacuum.

* Doing something else.-TACITUS, Agricola, ch. 43.

interlacing the Series of the tale with some judicial but strangely brief sentences. In making use of this history knowledge, we must not ascertain to ourselves. the sequel of anything to fall out just according to the like case in the history, but determine of it as a thing apt to chance otherwise; for an example only informs a likelihood, and if we govern our counsels by it, there must be a concurrence of the same reasons, not only in general but also in particularities.

In making judgment of history and considerately applying it to present interests, we must specially regard the dispositions of the agents and diligently remark how they are affected in mind, which is the least deceiving ground of forming opinion; for without this pondering and knowledge of the qualities of those nations which we meet with in reading, a man is unable to make any due comparison between the present particular and the former example. But to leave these disputations, and the causes of variety in customs to the schools, as a matter some will not grant and fewer understand, I will only give some instances of the proper qualities of some countries which most familiarly occur in reading. The ancient Romans were men of an invincible spirit nor dismayed with what frowning disasters soever fortune could suppress their courage; and having a mind superior to all adversity, resembled Antaeus in the poet, who so often as he was thrown to the ground received fresh strength, but being lifted up, was soon tamed by his adversary: so they in their declining state, promising better of their hopes, armed up their valor and were filled with a greater bravery of mind, but coming to the height of felicity and flowing with the spoils of the whole world, over-swayed with their own grandeur, began to quail in the last act, and after a safe escape from the main sea of foreign