The laws of history, in general, are truth of matter, method, and clearness of expression. The first propriety is necessary, to keep our understanding from the impositions of falsehood; for history is an argument framed from many particular examples or inductions; if these examples are not true, then those measures of life which we take from them will be false, and deceive us in their consequence. The second is grounded on the former; for if the method be confused, if the words or expressions of thought are any way obscure, then the ideas which we receive must be imperfect; and if such, we are not taught by them what to elect or what to shun. Truth, therefore, is required as the foundation of history, to inform us; disposition and perspicuity, as the manner to inform us plainly; one is the being, the other the well-being of it. History is principally divided into these three species; Commentaries, or Annals; History, properly so called; and Biographia, or the Lives of particular men. Commentaries, or Annals, are (as I may so call them,) naked history, or the plain relation of matter of fact, according to the succession of time, devested of all other ornaments. The springs and motives of actions are not here sought, unless they offer themselves, and are open to every man’s discernment. The method is the most natural that can be imagined, depending only on the observation of months and years, and drawing, in the order of them, whatsoever happened worthy of relation. The style is easy, simple, unforced, and unadorned with the pomp of figures; councils, guesses, politic observations, sentences, and orations, are avoided; in few words, a bare narration is its business. Of this kind the “Commentaries of Cæsar” are certainly the most admirable, and after him the “Annals of Tacitus” may have place; nay, even the prince of Greek historians, Thucydides, may almost be adopted into the number. For, though he instructs every where by sentences, though he gives the causes of actions, the councils of both parties, and makes orations where they are necessary, yet it is certain that he first designed his work a Commentary; every year writing down, like an unconcerned spectator as he was, the particular occurrences of the time, in the order as they happened; and his eighth book is wholly written after the way of Annals; though, outliving the war, he inserted in his others those ornaments which render his work the most complete and most instructive now extant.