calamities again. Accordingly, it appears to me that the
misfortunes of all men, from the beginning of the world, if they
be compared to these of the Jews (3) are not so considerable as
they were; while the authors of them were not foreigners neither.
This makes it impossible for me to contain my lamentations. But
if any one be inflexible in his censures of me, let him attribute
the facts themselves to the historical part, and the lamentations
to the writer himself only.

5. However, I may justly blame the learned men among the Greeks,
who, when such great actions have been done in their own times,
which, upon the comparison, quite eclipse the old wars, do yet
sit as judges of those affairs, and pass bitter censures upon the
labors of the best writers of antiquity; which moderns, although
they may be superior to the old writers in eloquence, yet are
they inferior to them in the execution of what they intended to
do. While these also write new histories about the Assyrians and
Medes, as if the ancient writers had not described their affairs
as they ought to have done; although these be as far inferior to
them in abilities as they are different in their notions from
them. For of old every one took upon them to write what happened
in his own time; where their immediate concern in the actions
made their promises of value; and where it must be reproachful to
write lies, when they must be known by the readers to be such.
But then, an undertaking to preserve the memory Of what hath not
been before recorded, and to represent the affairs of one's own
time to those that come afterwards, is really worthy of praise
and commendation. Now he is to be esteemed to have taken good
pains in earnest, not who does no more than change the
disposition and order of other men's works, but he who not only