The Way To Write History (1-5)

Well, to compare like with like, the majority of our educated class is now suffering from an Abderite epidemic. They are not stage-struck, indeed; that would have been a minor infatuation—to be possessed with other people’s verses, not bad ones either; no; but from the beginning of the present excitements—the barbarian war, the Armenian disaster, the succession of victories—you cannot find a man but is writing history; nay, every one you meet is a Thucydides, a Herodotus, a Xenophon. The old saying must be true, and war be the father of all things[*], seeing what a litter of historians it has now teemed forth at a birth.

Such sights and sounds, my Philo, brought into my head that old anecdote about the Sinopean. A report that Philip was marching on the town had thrown all Corinth into a bustle; one was furbishing his arms, another wheeling stones, a third patching the wall, a fourth strengthening a battlement, every one making himself useful somehow or other. Diogenes having nothing to do—of course no one thought of giving him a job— was movéd by the sight to gird up his philosopher’s cloak and begin rolling his tub-dwelling energetically up and down the Craneum; an acquaintance asked, and got, the explanation. ‘I do not want to be thought the only idler in such a busy multitude; I am rolling my tub to be like the rest.’

However, most of them see no need for advice here: there might as well-be an art of talking, seeing, or eating 3 historywriting ts perfectly easy, comes natural, is a universal gift; all that is necessary is the faculty of translating your thoughts into words. But the truth is—you know it without my telling, old friend—, it is mot a task to be lightly undertaken, or carried through without effort; no, it needs as much care as any sort of composition whatever, if one means to create ‘a possession for ever,’ as Thucydides calls it. Well, I know I shall not get a hearing from many of them, and some will be seriously offended —especially any who have finished and produced their work; in cases where its first reception was favourable, it would be folly to expect the authors to recast or correct; has it not the stamp of finality? is it not almost a State document? Yet even they may profit by my words; we are not likely to be attacked again; we have disposed of all our enemies; but there might be a Celto-Gothic or an Indo-Bactrian war; then our friends’ composition might be improved by the application of my measuringrod—always supposing that they recognize its correctness; failing that, let them do their own mensuration with the old footrule; the doctor will not particularly mind, though all Abdera insists on spouting the Andromeda.