perhaps at most nothing better than augury, and divination, and fuperftitious rites, " which were admired and cultivated in ignorant ages, even that was almoft entirely worn out of memory. Pedants, who would impofe all the traditions of the four firft ages of Rome, for authentic history, have infifted much on certain annals, of which mention is made in the very place I have juft now quoted."Abinitio rerum Romanarum, fays the fame interlocutor, “ ufque ad P. "MUCIUм pontificem maximum, res om"nés fingulorum annorum mandabat literis "pontifex maximus, efferebatque in album, "et proponebat tabulam domi, poteftas ut "effet populo cognofcendi; iidemque e"tiam nunc annales maximi nominantur." But, my lord, be pleafed to take notice, that the very diftinction I make is made. here between a bare annalift and an hiftorian: erat hiftoria nihil aliud", in thefe early days, "nifi annalium confectio". Take notice likewise, by the way, that Livy, whose particular application it had been to search into this matter, affirms pofitively that the greatest part of all public and private monuments, among which he fpecifies thefe very annals, had been destroyed in the fack of Rome by the Gauls: and PLUTARCH cites CLODIUS for the fame affertion, in the life of NUMA POMPILIUS. Take notice, in the

laft

laft place, of that which is more immediately to our present purpose. These annals could contain nothing more than short minutes or memorandums hung up in a table at the pontiff's houfe, like the rules of the game in a billiard-room, and much fuch history as we have in the epitomies prefixed to the books of LIVY or of any other hiftorian, in lapidary infcriptions, or in fome modern almanacs. Materials for history they were no doubt, but fcanty and infufficient; fuch as thofe ages could produce when writing and reading were accomplishments fo uncommon, that the praetor was directed by law, clavum pangere, to drive a nail into the door of a temple, that the number of years might be reckoned by the number of nails. Such in fhort as we have in monkifh annalists, and other ancient chroniclers of nations now in being: but not fuch as can entitle the authors of them to be called hiftorians, nor can enable others to write history in that fulness in which it must be written to become a leffon of ethics and politics. The truth is, nations, like men, have their infancy and the few paffages of that time, which they retain, are not fuch as deserved moft to be remembered; but fuch as, being moft proportioned to that age, made the ftrongest impreffions on their minds. In thofe nations that preferve their dominion

long

long, and grow up to manhood, the elegant as well as the neceffary arts and fciences are improved to fome degree of perfection: and hiftory, that was at firft intended only to record the names, or perhaps the general characters of fome famous men, and to tranfmit in grofs the remarkable events of every age to pofterity, is raised to answer another, and a nobler end.

II. THUS it happened among the Greeks, but much more among the Romans, notwithstanding the prejudices in favor of the former, even among the latter. I have fometimes thought that VIRGIL might have justly afcribed to his countrymen the praise of writing history better, as well as that of affording the nobleft fubjects for it, in thofe famous verfes, where the different excellencies of the two nations are fo finely touched: but he would have weakened perhaps by lengthening, and have flattened the climax. Open HERODOTUS, you are en

1

.

Excudent alii fpirantia mollius aera,

Credo equidem: vivos ducent de marmore vultus; Orabunt caufas melius: coelique meatus

Defcribent radio, et furgentia fidera dicent:

Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento: Hae tibi erunt artes; pacifque imponere morem, Parcere fubjectis, et debellare fuperbos.

tertained by an agreeable story-teller, who meant to entertain, and nothing more. Read THUCYDIDES OF XENOPHON, you are taught indeed as well as entertained: and the statesman or the general, the philofopher or the orator, fpeaks to you in every page. They wrote on fubjects on which they were well informed, and they treated them fully: they maintained the dignity of history, and thought it beneath them to vamp up old traditions, like the writers of their age and country, and to be the trumpeters of a lying antiquity. The Cyropaedia of XENOPHON may be objected perhaps; but if he gave it for a romance, not an hiftory, as he might for aught we can tell, it is out of the cafe: and if he gave it for an history, not a romance, I fhould prefer his authority to that of HERODOTUS OF any other of his countrymen. But however this might be, and whatever merit we may justly afcribe to these two writers, who were almost single in their kind, and who treated but small portions of history; certain it is in general, that the levity as well as loquacity of the Greeks made them incapable of keeping up to the true standard of history: and even POLYBIUS, and DIONYSIUS of Halicarnaffus must bow to the great Roman authors. Many principal

men

men of that commonwealth wrote memorials of their own actions and their own times: SYLLA, CAESAR, LABIENUS, POLLIO, AUGUSTUs, and others. What writers of memorials, what compilers of the materia hiftorica were these? What genius was neceffary to finish up the pictures that fuch mafters had fketched? Rome afforded men that were equal to the talk. Let the remains, the precious remains, of Sallust, of LIvy, and of TACITUS, witness this truth. When TACITUS wrote, even the appearances of virtue had been long proscribed, and tafte was grown corrupt as well as manners. Yet history preserved her integrity, and her luftre. She preferved them in the writings of fome whom TACITUS mentions, in none perhaps more than his own; every line of which out-weighs whole pages of fuch a rhetor as FAMIANUS STRADA. I fingle him out among the moderns, because he had the foolish presumption to cenfure TACITUS, and to write history himfelf: and your lordfhip will forgive this fhort excurfion in honor of a favorite author.

WHAT a school of private and public virtue had been opened to us at the refurrection of learning, if the latter hiftorians of the Roman common-wealth, and the first