many books of this
age, which speak too much, and yet say little; "Ipsi nobis furto
subducimur"; "We are stolen away from ourselves," setting a high price
on all that is our own. But hereof, though a late good writer make
complaint, yet shall it not lay hold on me, because I believe as he
doth; that who so thinks himself the wisest man, is but a poor and
miserable ignorant. Those that are the best men of war against all
the vanities and fooleries of the world, do always keep the strongest
guards against themselves, to defend them from themselves; from
self-love, self-estimation, and self-opinion.

Generally concerning the order of the work, I have only taken counsel
from the argument. For of the Assyrians, which after the downfall of
Babel take up the first part, and were the first great kings of
the world, there came little to the view of posterity: some few
enterprises, greater in fame than faith, of Ninus and Semiramis,
excepted.

It was the story of the Hebrews, of all before the Olympiads, that
overcame the consuming disease of time, and preserved itself, from the
very cradle and beginning to this day: and yet not so entire, but
that the large discourses thereof (to which in many Scriptures we are
referred) are nowhere found. The fragments of other stories, with the
actions of those kings and princes which shot up here and there in the
same time, I am driven to relate by way of digression: of which we may
say with Virgil: "Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto"; "They appear
here and there floating in the great gulf of time."

To the same first ages do belong the report of many inventions therein
found, and from them derived to us; though most of the authors' names
have perished in so long a navigation. For those ages had their laws;
they had diversity of government; they had kingly rule; nobility;
policy in war; navigation, and all, or the most of needful trades. To
speak therefore of these (seeing in a general history we should have
left a great deal of nakedness, by their omission) it cannot properly
be called a digression. True it is, that I have made also many others:
which if they shall be laid to my charge, I must cast the fault into
the great heap of human error. For seeing we digress in all the
ways of our lives: yea, seeing the life of man is nothing else but
digression; I may the better be excused, in writing their lives and
actions. I am not altogether ignorant in the laws of history and of
the kind