and were always the children of action, and lodged only for a short space of time within the quarters of contemplation, and where probably too they might have contracted some rust not easily filed off. Of the first kind indeed of those who, in and from the contemplative life, brought a great treasure of learning, knowledge, and wisdom, into the public stores and receptacles, in the improvement, if not the invention, of arts and sciences, and the devising many expedients and prescriptions for the benefit of human life, they reckon Lycurgus and Solon, and all the law-makers, all the philosophers, all the most famous orators and the best historians, and would have it believed that all learned men led contemplative lives; whereas in truth there were very few, if any of them, who were not much versed in the business of the age in which they lived. We cannot doubt but Lycurgus and Solon, and all other law-makers, were not only well skilled in the laws of nature, but in the nature of mankind, and the constitution, temper, humour, and affections of their own citizens, which could be learned only by conversation, experience, and observation; which distinguishes the active life from the contemplative or speculative. Aristotle was a great courtier, being tutor to the greatest king, and in the greatest court the world then had; and by his good breeding, gave great beauty and lustre

to the philosophy of the age before him, which had been studied too much in the dark. Can any man think Demosthenes or Cicero to be contemplative men, when they governed the greatest actions of their several republics, and were the most active men in both? And though Tully was the greater magistrate, having been the highest, yet Demosthenes had the greater power in the counsels of that senate, and was as much hated and feared by Alexander as ever the other had been by Cæsar. For the historians, I think a man may very warrantably say, that there was never yet a good history written but by men conversant in business, and of the best and most liberal education. Polybius was a counsellor, and an officer in a part of the wars which he writ. Livy was in the court of Augustus, well known to the emperor, and in great grace and conversation with the favourite, and so acquainted with all the transactions of the world. Tacitus, besides his noble extraction, had his education in the near trust of two great emperors, Vespasian and Titus, underwent several great employments and offices in the commonwealth, and was afterwards consul in the time of Nerva, after whose death he began to write his history. It is not a collection of records, or an admission to the view and perusal of the most secret letters and acts of state, (though they are great and ne

cessary contributions) which can enable a man to write a history, if there be an absence of that genius and spirit and soul of an historian, which is contracted by the knowledge and course and method of business, and by conversation and familiarity in the inside of courts, and the most active and eminent persons in the government; all which yields an admirable light, though a man writes of times, and things which were transacted for the most part before he was born.

Upon this argument we have the instances of four eminent persons of the age in which we live, who were all men in their several degrees of great lustre in the world, who all writ histories of the same or near the same times; insomuch as there are very few signal persons, and few important actions, which are mentioned in any one of them, of which either of the other are silent; against the veracity of either of which there is no very material objection, and yet two of these are by so much preferable before the other two, that the first may worthily stand by the sides of the best of the ancients, whilst both the others must be placed under them; and a man, without knowing more of them, may, by reading their books, find the difference between their extractions, their educations, their conversations, and their judgment. The first two are Henry D'Avila and Cardinal Bentivoglio,

both Italians of illustrious birth; the former a Florentine, the other of Ferrara, and so proper enough to be called a Roman. D'Avila was an officer of trust and confidence in the family of the famous Catherine de Medicis, queen, and almost king too, of France, during the reign of four great kings of that nation; and had himself a command of horse in the army and enterprises of which he writes, and a participation of the counsels. Bentivoglio was of that family, which as princes had governed Bentivoglio for many years; he was clerk of the chamber to Clement the Eighth, by or near the time that he was twenty years of age; then nuncio in Flanders, and afterwards in France, till he was created cardinal shortly after the death of Henry the Fourth; and though his history be of the war of Flanders, and that of D'Avila of the civil wars of France, yet those countries had so much to do with each other, that as they were for the most part of the same time, so they often set forth and describe the same actions with very pleasant and delightful variety; and commonly the greatest persons they have occasion to mention were very well known to them both, which makes their characters always very lively. Both their histories are excellent, and will instruct the ablest and wisest men how to write, and terrify them from writing. The other two were Hugo Grotius, and Famianus Stra

da, who both wrote in Latin upon the same argument, and of the same time, of the wars of Flanders, and of the Low-Countries. The great Grotius, who may justly be esteemed as good, if not the best scholar that age brought out in which he lived, had in his education, in his profession, in the offices and employments he bore in his own country whilst he lived there, and in the encouragements and honours he enjoyed in other courts and kingdoms, when he was banished from his own country, all the conversation and experience that is requisite to make the sublimest person: and a great man he was to all purposes, and could not be without a profound judgment; though it was not of an allay that sparkled in the French court, where he continued many years ambassador for the most active crown of Sweden: yet his history, which he valued above many other his excellent works, and more deliberated upon it before it was finished, and cast his eye over it more after, did not satisfy the expectation the world had of it, neither in the life and spirit of it, nor in the clear description of the councils upon which great enterprises were undertaken, nor the conduct of those enterprises, with a lively representation of persons and actions, which makes the reader present at all they say or do; in all which the other two excel, and will admit of no comparison to be made with them