Trips to the Moon | Page 5

that I mean to write history
myself, or be a narrator of facts; you need not fear me, I am not so rash,
knowing the danger too well if I roll it amongst the stones, especially
such a tub as mine, which is not over-strong, so that the least pebble I
strike against would dash it in pieces. I will tell you, however, what my
design is--how I mean to be present at the battle and yet keep out of the
reach of danger. I intend to shelter myself from the waves and the
smoke, {21} and the cares that writers are liable to, and only give them
a little good advice and a few precepts; to have, in short, some little
hand in the building, though I do not expect my name will be inscribed

on it, as I shall but just touch the mortar with the tip of my finger.
There are many, I know, who think there is no necessity for instruction
at all with regard to this business, any more than there is for walking,
seeing, or eating, and that it is the easiest thing in the world for a man
to write history if he can but say what comes uppermost. But you, my
friend, are convinced that it is no such easy matter, nor should it be
negligently and carelessly performed; but that, on the other hand, if
there be anything in the whole circle of literature that requires more
than ordinary care and attention, it is undoubtedly this. At least, if a
man would wish, as Thucydides says, to labour for posterity. I very
well know that I cannot attack so many without rendering myself
obnoxious to some, especially those whose histories are already
finished and made public; even if what I say should be approved by
them, it would be madness to expect that they should retract anything
or alter that which had been once established and, as it were, laid up in
royal repositories. It may not be amiss, however, to give them these
instructions, that in case of another war, the Getae against the Gauls, or
the Indians, perhaps, against the barbarians (for with regard to
ourselves there is no danger, our enemies being all subdued), by
applying these rules if they like them, they may know better how to
write for the future. If they do not choose this, they may even go on by
their old measure; the physician will not break his heart if all the people
of Abdera follow their own inclination and continue to act the
Andromeda. {23}
Criticism is twofold: that which teaches us what we are to choose, and
that which teaches us what to avoid. We will begin with the last, and
consider what those faults are which a writer of history should be free
from; next, what it is that will lead him into the right path, how he
should begin, what order and method he should observe, what he
should pass over in silence, and what he should dwell upon, how things
may be best illustrated and connected. Of these, and such as these, we
will speak hereafter; in the meantime let us point out the faults which
bad writers are most generally guilty of, the blunders which they
commit in language, composition, and sentiment, with many other
marks of ignorance, which it would be tedious to enumerate, and

belong not to our present argument. The principal faults, as I observed
to you, are in the language and composition.
You will find on examination, that history in general has a great many
of this kind, which, if you listen to them all, you will be sufficiently
convinced of; and for this purpose it may not be unseasonable to
recollect some of them by way of example. And the first that I shall
mention is that intolerable custom which most of them have of omitting
facts, and dwelling for ever on the praises of their generals and
commanders, extolling to the skies their own leaders, and degrading
beyond measure those of their enemies, not knowing how much history
differs from panegyric, that there is a great wall between them, or that,
to use a musical phrase, they are a double octave {24a} distant from
each other; the sole business of the panegyrist is, at all events and by
every means, to extol and delight the object of his praise, and it little
concerns him whether it be true or not. But history will not admit the
least degree of falsehood any more than, as physicians say, the
wind-pipe {24b} can receive into it any kind of food.
These men seem not to know that poetry has its particular rules and
precepts; and that history is governed by others directly opposite. That
with regard