The Limits of History
Having thus brought the generals of the two nations
note
and the war itself into Italy, before beginning
the campaign, I wish to say a few words about
what I conceive to be germane or not to
my history.
I can conceive some readers complaining that, while
devoting a great deal of space to Libya and Iberia, I have said
little or nothing about the strait of the Pillars of Hercules, the
Mare Externum, or the British Isles, and the manufacture of
-- 217 --
tin in them, or even of the silver and gold mines in Iberia itself,
of which historians give long and contradictory accounts. It was
not, let me say, because I thought these subjects out of place in
history that I passed them over; but because, in the first place,
I did not wish to be diffuse, or distract the attention of students
from the main current of my narrative; and, in the next place,
because I was determined not to treat of them in scattered
notices or casual allusions, but to assign them a distinct time
and place, and at these, to the best of my ability, to give a trustworthy account of them. On the same principle I must
deprecate any feeling of surprise if, in the succeeding portions
of my history, I pass over other similar topics, which might
seem naturally in place, for the same reasons. Those who ask
for dissertations in history on every possible subject, are somewhat like greedy guests at a banquet, who, by tasting every
dish on the table, fail to really enjoy any one of them at the
time, or to digest and feel any benefit from them afterwards.
Such omnivorous readers get no real pleasure in the present,
and no adequate instruction for the future.
