Description

Works of history may be divided into two great classes: those which select a single action or a detached period for their subject; and those which follow a nation through the whole or a large portion of its existence; and which, embracing a number of such subjects, compensate for giving less minute and accurate information upon each, by explaining their relation, and the influence which they have exerted upon each other. To the former belong Thucydides, Xenophon, and Cesar; to the latter Diodorus and Livy: or, in English literature, we may take Clarendon and Hume respectively as the representatives of these divisions. It is obvious that the method of treating themes so different in character, must also be essentially different; that for an historian of the latter class to aim at the particularity which we expect in the former, would involve something of the same absurdity as if a landscape painter were to give to an extended horizon the distinctness and detail which are proper to his foregrounds or to a closely bounded scene. If our curiosity is not satisfied by a comprehensive view, the remedy is to be found by multiplying pictures of its most striking parts, not by introducing into one canvas a multitude of objects which must fatigue and confuse the mind, and obscure those leading features which ought to stand out in prominent relief.