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664 %e. 664 Niehuhr on the Distinction them when the movement has come to an end. A narrative from which no one demands minute fidelity, which treats the traditional materials of a history with perfect freedom, like scenes in a painting, may be framed with as little art as a poem formed out of a mythological dream ; and on the other hand its opposite, the genuine and accurate reflex of a period which the writer has lived through with thoughtful attention, is no less complete and copious. But if we ever make an attempt to relate the events of the times of our fathers and grandfathers, with scrupulous fidelity and minuteness, we find the colours fail, the outlines become unsteady : we miss that firm conviction which guides the hand of one who is describing what he has witnessed, and which, even when it is in error, produces something which hesitating indecision can never reach. Not that this is unattainable for one who, with the aid of an ample experience, transports himself by reflexion into the past : but it required a greater effbrt to write the Jugurtha than the Catiline. A dim notion of this condition, without which a history cannot live and breathe, was the foundation of the definition in Servius, according to which history is a narrative of contem- porary events : only it is a false contrast that is drawn from it, when it is said that annals relate the events of earlier times, q,nd that Livy's work consisted of annals and history. Most writers perhaps have been satisfied with this explanation : among the rest Gronovius declares himself so : and even Grotius must have held it to be the only right one. For he divides his history of the Netherlands into Annals and History, and begins the latter from the time of his own birth : in the Annals he often does not distinguish the years at all, still less does he mention them in the narrative, so that if the numbers were not annexed in the margin, the reader would not know the dates : as to the other peculiar characteristics of this kind of narrative, which Tacitus observes, we find no trace of them in him : the unity of the commotion and insurrection in the Netherlands excludes everything beside. It is probable that those who have defended the definition in Servius, have interpreted it in general according to the division here adopted by Grotius : and this great man would certainly not have suff'ered authority to prescribe to him in the