ise unwillingly
is so far from being more civil than to dispraise willingly, that it is
perhaps rather more uncivil.

The fourth sign of a partial disposition in writing of history I take
to be this: When a matter is related in two or more several manners, and
the historian shall embrace the worst. Sophisters indeed are permitted,
for the obtaining either of profit or reputation, to undertake the
defence of the worst cause; for they neither create any firm belief
of the matter, nor yet do they deny that they are often pleased in
maintaining paradoxes and making incredible things appear probable. But
an historian is then just, when he asserts such things as he knows to be
true, and of those that are uncertain reports rather the better than
the worse. Nay, there are many writers who wholly omit the worse. Thus
Ephorus writes of Themistocles, that he was acquainted with the treason
of Pausanias and his negotiations with the King's lieutenants, but that
he neither consented to it, nor hearkened to Pausanias's proffers of
making him partaker of his hopes; and Thucydides left the whole matter
out of his story, as judging it to be false.

Moreover, in things confessed to have been done, but for doing which
the cause and intention is unknown, he who casts his conjectures on the
worst side is partial and malicious. Thus do the comedians, who affirm
the Peloponnesian war to have been kindled by Pericles for the love of
Aspasia or the sake of Phidias, and not through any desire of honor,
or ambition of pulling down the Peloponnesian pride and giving place
in nothing to the Lacedaemonians. For those who suppose a bad cause
for laudable works and commendable actions, endeavoring by calumnies
to insinuate sinister suspicions of the actor when they cannot openly
discommend the act,--as they that impute the killing of Alexander the
tyrant by Theba not to any magnanimity or hatred of vice, but to a
certain feminine jealousy and passion, and those that say Cato slew
himself for fear Caesar should put him to a more shameful death,--such
as these are manifestly in the highest degree envious and malicious.

An historical narration is also more or less guilty of malice, according
as it relates the manner of the action; as if one should be said to have
performed an exploit rather by money than bravery, as some affirm
of Philip; or else easily and without any labor, as it is said of
Alexander; or else not by prudence, but by Fortune, as the