it as a pleasing dream, of which, when they awake, they voluntarily
dismiss the images from their minds.

The examples and events of history press, indeed, upon the mind with the
weight of truth; but when they are reposited in the memory, they are
oftener employed for show than use, and rather diversify conversation
than regulate life. Few are engaged in such scenes as give them
opportunities of growing wiser by the downfal of statesmen or the defeat
of generals. The stratagems of war, and the intrigues of courts, are
read by far the greater part of mankind with the same indifference as
the adventures of fabled heroes, or the revolutions of a fairy region.
Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold
which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which he
cannot apply will make no man wise.

The mischievous consequences of vice and folly, of irregular desires and
predominant passions, are best discovered by those relations which are
levelled with the general surface of life, which tell not how any man
became great, but how he was made happy; not how he lost the favour of
his prince, but how he became discontented with himself.

Those relations are, therefore, commonly of most value in which the
writer tells his own story. He that recounts the life of another,
commonly dwells most upon conspicuous events, lessens the familiarity of
his tale to increase its dignity, shows his favourite at a distance,
decorated and magnified like the ancient actors in their tragick dress,
and endeavours to hide the man that he may produce a hero.

But if it be true, which was said by a French prince, "that no man was a
hero to the servants of his chamber," it is equally true, that every man
is yet less a hero to himself. He that is most elevated above the crowd
by the importance of his employments, or the reputation of his genius,
feels himself affected by fame or business but as they influence his
domestick life. The high and low, as they have the same faculties and
the same senses, have no less similitude in their pains and pleasures.
The sensations are the same in all, though produced by very different
occasions. The prince feels the same pain when an invader seizes a
province, as the farmer when a thief drives away his cow. Men thus equal
in themselves will appear equal in honest and impartial biography; and
those whom fortune or nature places at the greatest distance may afford
instruction to