For it is clear, upon reflection, that just as the current world comes to the perceptions of mankind through the interpretations of artists or demagogues or prophets, so the past comes to them through the interpretations of its chroniclers. There lies the past, enormous and unformed; here are the men of pen and book who make the lenses through which it is perceived, who fix the frame of the picture, who choose what shall be looked at and what not. They are artists and the past is their material. Let a given chronicler be as honest as he can or will be; he is still a member of a limited class of men and he is interested in a limited range of life. Let all the chroniclers be honest, and they are still chroniclers: they will set down what interests their caste. They will shape their material in epic or dramatic form; they will find arguments for their favourite convictions; they will cherish or neglect in accordance with their dispositions. Sophisticate and complicate the matter as they will, they tend in all ages and the latest age to do what they did at first. They see the rulers of men sitting on their proper thrones and they sing in verse or say in prose how those rulers came there; they remember themselves and they pay natural honour to their fellows of the guild. In a sense, the plain man cannot feel that he has a past. He looks into histories and sees very little of the world he knows. That older world is much too full of kings and bards for him to feel at home. CREATIVE READING