generals under whom they have fought. But how much is it to be apprehended that the pencil will in many cases be guided by the feelings? The portraits given by lord Clarendon appear to be drawn with more impartiality, gravity, and judgment, than those which we peruse with so much delight in cardinal Retz.

But to attempt to paint the ancients; to elaborate in this way the development of their minds; to regard events as characters in which we may accurately read the most secret feelings and intents of their hearts,—this is an undertaking of no ordinary difficulty and discrimination, although as frequently conducted, both childish, and trifling.

Of Cicero's Maxim concerning History, that an Historian

should never dare to relate a Falsehood or to conceal a Truth.

The first part of this precept is incontestable; we must stop for a moment to examine the other. If a particular truth may be of any service to the state, your silence is censurable. But I will suppose you to write the history of a prince who had reposed in you a secret, -ought you to reveal that secret? Ought you to say to all posterity what you would be criminal in disclosing to a single individual? Should the duty of a historian prevail over the higher and more imperative duty of a man?

I will suppose again, that you have witnessed a failing or weakness which has not had the slightest influence on public affairs-ought you to publish such weakness? In such a case, history becomes satire.

It must be allowed, indeed, that the greater part o. anecdote writers are more indiscreet than they are useful. But what opinion must we entertain of those impudent compilers who appear to glory in scattering about them calumny and slander, and print and sell scandals as La Voisin sold poisons?

Of Satirical History.

If Plutarch censured Herodotus for not having suffi-. ciently extolled the fame of some of the Grecian cities,

and for omitting many known facts worthy of being recorded, how much more censurable are certain of our modern writers, who, without any of the merits of Herodotus, impute both to princes and to nations acts of the most odious character, without the slightest proof or evidence? The history of the war in 1741 has been written in England; and it relates, "that at the battle of Fontenoy the French fired at the English balls and pieces of glass which had been prepared with poison; and that the duke of Cumberland sent to the king of France a box full of those alleged poisonous articles, which had been found in the bodies of the wounded English." The same author adds, that the French having lost in that battle forty thousand men, the parliament issued an order to prevent people from talking on the subject under pain of corporal punish

ment.

The fraudulent Memoirs published not long since under the name of Madame de Maintenon, abound with similar absurdities. We are told in them, that at the siege of Lille the allies threw placards into the city, containing these words: "Frenchmen, be comforted,-Maintenon shall never be your queen.”

Almost every page is polluted by false statements and abuse of the royal family and other leading families in the kingdom, without the author's making. out the smallest probability to give a colour to his calumnies. This is not writing history; it is writing. slanders which deserve the pillory.

A vast number of works have been printed in Holland, under the name of history, of which the style is as vulgar and coarse as the abuse, and the facts as false as they are ill narrated. This, it has been observed, is a bad fruit of the noble tree of liberty. But if the contemptible authors of this trash have the liberty thus to deceive their readers, it becomes us here to take the liberty to undeceive thein.

A thirst for despicable gain, and the insolence of vulgar and grovelling manners, were the only motives which led that protestant refugee from Languedoc, of the name of Langlevieux, but commonly called La Beau

melle, to attempt the most infamous trick that ever disgraced literature. He sold to Eslinger, the bookseller of Frankfort, in 1751, for seventeen louis-d'or, the History of the Age of Louis XIV. which is not his; and, either to make it believed that he was the proprietor, or to earn his money, he loaded it with abusive and abominable notes against Louis XIV., his son, and his grandson the duke of Burgundy, whom he abuses in the most unmeasured terms, and calls a traitor to his grandfather and his country. He pours out upon the duke of Orleans, the regent, calumnies at once the most horrible and the most absurd; no person of consequence is spared, and yet no person of consequence did he ever know. He retails against the marshals Villars and Villeroi, against ministers, and even against ladies, all the petty, dirty, and scandalous tales that could be collected from the lowest taverns and wine-houses; and he speaks of the greatest princes as if they were amenable to himself, and under his own personal jurisdiction. He expresses himself, indeed, as if he were a formal and authorised judge of kings:-" Give me," says he, "a Stuart, and I will make him king of England."

This most ridiculous and abominable conduct, proceeding from an author obscure and unknown, has incurred no prosecution; it would have been severely punished in a man whose words would have carried any weight. But we must here observe, that these works of darkness frequently circulate through all Europe; they are sold at the fairs of Frankfort and Leipsic, and the whole of the north is overrun with them. Foreigners, who are not well informed, derive from books of this description their knowledge of modern history. German authors are not always sufficiently on their guard against memoirs of this character, but employ them as materials; which has been the case with t' memoirs of Pontis, Montbrun, Rochefort, and Pordac; with all the pretended political testaments of ministers of state, which have proceeded from the pen of forgery; with the "Royal Tenth" of Boisguillebert, impudently published under the name

of marshal Vauban; and with innumerable compilations of anas and anecdotes.

History is sometimes even still more shamefully abused in England. As there are always two parties in furious hostility against each other, until some common danger for a season unites them, the writers of one faction condemn everything that the others approve. The same individual is represented as a Cato and a Catiline. How is truth to be extricated from this adulation and satire? Perhaps there is only one rule to be depended upon, which is, to believe all the good which the historian of a party ventures to allow to the leaders of the opposite faction; and all the ills which he ventures to impute to the chiefs of his own-a rule, of which neither party can severely complain.

With regard to memoirs actually written by agents in the events recorded, as those of Clarendon, Ludlow, and Burnet in England, and de La Rochefoucauld and de Retz in France, if they agree, they are true; if they contradict each other, doubt them.

With respect to anas and anecdotes, there may perhaps be one in a hundred of them that contains some shadow of truth.

SECTION IV.

Of the Method or Manner of writing History, and of Style.

We have said so much upon this subject, that we must here say very little. It is sufficiently known and fully admitted, that the method and style of Livy-his gravity, and instructive eloquence, are suitable to the majesty of the Roman republic; that Tacitus is more calculated to portray tyrants, Polybius to give lessons on war, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus to investigate antiquities.

But, while he forms himself on the general model of these great masters, a weighty responsibility is attached to the modern historian from which they were exempt. He is required to give more minute details, facts more completely authenticated, correct dates, precise antho

rities, more attention to customs, laws, manners, commerce, finance, agriculture, and population. It is with history as it is with mathematics and natural philosophy; the field of it is immensely enlarged. The more easy it is to compile newspapers, the more difficult it is at the present day to write history.

Daniel thought himself a historian, because he transcribed dates and narratives of battles, of which I can understand nothing. He should have informed me of the rights of the nation, the rights of the chief corporate establishments in it; its laws, usages, manners, with the alterations by which they have been affected in the progress of time. This nation might not improperly address him in some such language as the following:-I want from you my own history rather than that of Louis le Gros and Louis Hutin; you tell me, copying from some old, unauthenticated, and carelessly written chronicle, that when Louis VIII. was attacked by a mortal disease, and lay extenuated, languishing, and powerless, the physicians ordered the more than half-dead monarch to take to his bed a blooming damsel, who might cherish the few sparks of remaining life; and that the pious king rejected the unholy advice with indignation. Alas! Daniel, you are unacquainted, it seems, with the Italian proverb"Donna ignuda manda l'uomo sotto la terra." You ought to possess a little stronger tincture of political and natural history.

The history of a foreign country should be formed on a different model to that of our own.

If we compose a history of France, we are under no necessity to describe the course of the Seine and the Loire; but if we publish a history of the conquests of the Portuguese in Asia, a topographical description of the recently explored country is required. It is desirable that we should, as it were, conduct the reader by the hand round Africa, and along the coasts of Persia and India; and it is expected that we should treat with information and judgment, of manners, laws, and customs so new to Europe.

We have a great variety of histories of the estab