The Way To Write History (4-6)

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.

Advice has two provinces—one of choice, the other of