Book II - Wilbourhall.org

xii INTRODUCTION. [lthat nation's life. But this does not really involveany additional difficulty of selection, because nonebut great nations produce great historians; and nogreat historian would take the trouble to chroniclethe deeds of little nations. Nor would any greathistorian write the history of the declineor fall of anation once great, except in those cases in which thehistory of the decline of one nation is inextricablybound up with the history of the rise of anothergreat nation or of other great nations ;as in the caseof the decline of the Roman Empire, with the historyof which isriseinextricably bouml up the history of theof the great nations inhabiting modern Europe.It happens that the period of Greek history withwhich Thucydides deals is especially useful, becauseit is short, because it consists of a war which calledinto play all the virtues and all the defects of a greatand ingenious nation, and because it produced ahistorian whose genius is worthy of itself, and who'makes his auditor a spectator' of that conflict ofarms and of passions which he describes.One of the necessary qualities in a perfect historianis that he should possess the power of presenting hisaccount of the past in an attractive form. In otherwords, the style—which is the very essence of allauthorship and reveals the author himself—ought tobe artistic. Otherwise history cannot escape beingdull, as all bare and unadorned enumerations of facts,however important, must be.The reader has a rightto expect to be interested as well as edified bywhat he reads. Who reads Polybius or Hallam,most edifying writers, with any pleasure 1 Who