ford
meagre food to the intellect, though they take away the uneasy sense of
inanition. _Tout abrege sur un bon livre est un sot abrege_, says
Montaigne; and of all abridgments there are none by which a reader is
liable, and so likely, to be deceived as by epitomised histories.

_Sir Thomas More_.--Call to mind, I pray you, my foliophagous friend,
what was the extent of Michael Montaigne's library; and that if you had
passed a winter in his chateau you must, with that appetite of yours,
have but yourself upon short allowance there. Historical knowledge is
not the first thing needful for a statesman, nor the second. And yet do
not hastily conclude that I am about to disparage its importance. A
sailor might as well put to sea without chart or compass as a minister
venture to steer the ship of the State without it. For as "the strong
and strange varieties" in human nature are repeated in every age, so "the
thing which hath been, it is that which shall be. Is there anything
whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old
time which was before us."

_Montesinos_.--

"For things forepast are precedents to us,
Whereby we may things present now, discuss,"

as the old poet said who brought together a tragical collection of
precedents in the mirror of magistrates. This is what Lord Brooke calls

"the second light of government
Which stories yield, and no time can disseason:"

"the common standard of man's reason," he holds to be the first light
which the founders of a new state, or the governors of an old one, ought
to follow.

_Sir Thomas More_.--Rightly, for though the most sagacious author that
ever deduced maxims of policy from the experience of former ages has said
that the misgovernment of States, and the evils consequent thereon, have
arisen more from the neglect of that experience--that is, from historical
ignorance--than from any other cause, the sum and substance of historical
knowledge for practical purposes consists in certain general principles;
and he who understands those principles, and has a due sense of their
importance, has always, in the darkest circumstances, a star in sight by
which he may direct his course surely.

_Montesinos_.--The British ministers who began and conducted the first
war against revolutionary France, were once reminded, in a memorable
speech, that if they had known, or knowing had borne in mind, three
maxims of Machiavelli, they would n