ornament. As a Story, he is nothing, but a narration of things done, with the beginnings, causes, and appendices thereof. In that kind, your method must be to have _seriem temporum_ very exactly, which the chronologies of MELANCTHON, TARCHAGNORA, LANGUET and such others will help you to. Then to consider by that... as you note yourself, XENOPHON to follow THUCYDIDES, so doth THUCYDIDES follow HERODOTUS, and DIODORUS SICULUS follow XENOPHON. So generally, do the Roman stories follow the Greek; and the particular stories of the present monarchies follow the Roman. In that kind, you have principally to note the examples of virtue and vice, with their good or evil success; the establishment or rains of great Estates, with the causes, the time, and circumstances of the laws then written of; the enterings and endings of wars; and therein, the stratagems against the enemy, and the discipline upon the soldier. And thus much as a very historiographer. Besides this, the Historian makes himself a Discourser for profit; and an Orator, yea, a Poet sometimes, for ornament. An Orator; in making excellent orations, _e re nata_, which are to be marked, but marked with the note of rhetorical remembrances: a Poet; in painting for the effects, the motions, the whisperings of the people, which though in disputation, one might say were true--yet who will mark them well shall find them taste of a poetical vein, and in that kind are gallantly to be marked--for though perchance, they were not so, yet it is enough they might be so. The last point which tends to teach profit, is of a Discourser; which name I give to whosoever speaks _non simpliciter de facto, sed de qualitatibus et circumstantiis facti_: and that is it which makes me and many others, rather note much with our pen than with our mind. Because we leave all these discourses to the confused trust of our memory; because they be not tied to the tenour of a question: as Philosophers use sometimes, places; the Divine, in telling his opinion and reasons in religion; sometimes the Lawyer, in showing the causes and benefits of laws; sometimes a Natural Philosopher, in setting down the causes of any strange thing which the Story binds him to speak of; but most commonly a Moral Philosopher, either in the ethic part, where he sets forth virtues or vices and the natures of passions; or in the politic, when he doth (as often he doth) meddle sententiously with matters of Estate. Again, sometimes he gives precept of war, both offensive and defensive. And so, lastly, not professing any art as his matter leads him, he deals with all arts; which--because it carrieth the life of a lively example--it is wonderful what light it gives to the arts themselves; so as the great Civilians help themselves with the discourses of the Historians. So do Soldiers; and even Philosophers and Astronomers. But that I wish herein is this, that when you read any such thing, you straight bring it to his head, not only of what art; but by your logical subdivisions to the next member and parcel of the art. And so--as in a table--be it witty words, of which TACITUS is full; sentences, of which