Pulls down old histories to build them up finer again, after a new model
of his own designing. He takes away all the lights of truth in history
to make it the fitter tutoress of life; for Truth herself has little or
nothing to do in the affairs of the world, although all matters of the
greatest weight and moment are pretended and done in her name, like a
weak princess that has only the title, and falsehood all the power. He
observes one very fit decorum in dating his histories in the days of old
and putting all his own inventions upon ancient times; for when the
world was younger, it might perhaps love and fight, and do generous
things at the rate he describes them; but since it is grown old, all
these heroic feats are laid by and utterly given over, nor ever like to
come in fashion again; and therefore all his images of those virtues
signify no more than the statues upon dead men's tombs, that will never
make them live again. He is like one of Homer's gods, that sets men
together by the ears and fetches them off again how he pleases; brings
armies into the field like Janello's leaden soldiers; leads up both
sides himself, and gives the victory to which he pleases, according as
he finds it fit the design of his story; makes love and lovers too,
brings them acquainted, and appoints meetings when and where he pleases,
and at the same time betrays them in the height of all their felicity to
miserable captivity, or some other horrid calamity; for which he makes
them rail at the gods and curse their own innocent stars when he only
has done them all the injury; makes men villains, compels them to act
all barbarous inhumanities by his own directions, and after inflicts the
cruellest punishments upon them for it. He makes all his knights fight
in fortifications, and storm one another's armour before they can come
to encounter body for body, and always matches them so equally one with
another that it is a whole page before they can guess which is likely to
have the better; and he that has it is so mangled that it had been
better for them both to have parted fair at first; but when they
encounter with those that are no knights, though ever so well armed and
mounted, ten to one goes for nothing. As for the ladies, they are every
one the most beautiful in the whole world, and that's the reason why no
one of them, nor all together with all their charms, have power to tempt
away any knight from another. He differs from a just historian as a
joiner does from a carpenter; the one does things plainly and
substantially for use, and the other carves and polishes merely for show
and ornament.