STUDY of HISTORY.

LETTER IV.

I. That there is in history fufficient authenticity to render it useful, notwithstanding all objections to the contrary.

II. Of the method and due reftrictions to be observed in the study of it.

WH

HETHER the letter I now begin to write will be long or fhort, I know not: but I find my memory is refreshed, my imagination warmed, and matter flows in fo faft upon me, that I have not time to press it close. Since therefore you have provoked me to write, you must be content to take what follows.

I HAVE obferved already that we are apt naturally to apply to our felves what has I 3 happened

happened to other men, and that examples take their force from hence; as well those which history, as those which experience, offers to our reflexion. What we do not believe to have happened therefore, we fhall not thus apply: and for want of the fame application, fuch examples will not have the fame effect. Antient history, fuch antient history as I have defcribed, is quite unfit therefore in this respect to answer the ends that every reasonable man should propose to himself in this ftudy; because such antient history will never gain fufficient credit with any reasonable man. A tale well told, or a comedy or a tragedy well wrought up, may have a momentary effect upon the mind, by heating the imagination, furprizing the judgment, and affecting strongly the paffions. The Athenians are faid to have been tranfported into a kind of martial phrenzy by the representation of a tragedy of AESCHYLUS, and to have marched under this influence from the theatre to the plains of MARATHON, Thefe momentary impreffions might be managed

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managed, for aught I know, in fuch manner as to contribute a little, by frequent repetitions of them, towards maintaining a kind of habitual contempt of folly, deteftation of vice, and admiration of virtue in well-policed common-wealths. But then these impreffions cannot be made, nor this little effect be wrought, unless the fables bear an appearance of truth. When they bear this appearance, reafon connives at the innocent fraud of imagination; reafon dispenses, in favour of probability, with those strict rules of criticism that she has established to try the truth of fact: but after all, fhe receives these fables as fables; and as fuch only the permits imagination to make the most of them. If they pretended to be history, they would be soon subjected to another and more fevere examination. What may have happened, is the matter of an ingenious fable: what has happened, is that of an authentic hiftory: the impreffions which one or the other makes are in proportion. When imagination grows lawless and wild, ram

bles out of the precincts of nature, and tells of heroes and giants, fairies and enchanters, of events and of phaenomena repugnant to univerfal experience, to our clearest and most diftinct ideas, and to all the known laws of nature, reafon does not connive a moment; but far from receiving fuch narrations as historical, she rejects them as unworthy to be placed even among the fabulous. Such narrations therefore cannot make the flightest momentary impreffions, on a mind fraught with knowledge, and void of fuperftition. Imposed by authority, and affifted by artifice, the delufion hardly prevails over common sense; blind ignorance almost sees, and rafh fuperftition hefitates: nothing lefs than enthusiasm and phrenzy can give credit to fuch hiftories, or apply fuch examples. Don QUIXOTE believed; but even SANCHO doubted,

WHAT I have faid will not be much controverted by any man who has read AMApIs of Gaul, or has examined our antient

traditions without prepoffeffion. The truth is, the principal difference between them feems to be this. In AMADIS of Gaul, we have a thread of abfurdities that are invented without any regard to probability, and that lay no claim to belief: antient traditions are an heap of fables, under which fome particular truths, infcrutable, and therefore useless to mankind, may lie concealed; which have a juft pretence to nothing more, and yet impofe themselves upon us, and become under the venerable name of antient history the foundations of modern fables; the materials with which so many systems of fancy have been erected.

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BUT now, as men are apt to carry their judgments into extremes, there are some that will be ready to infift that all history is fabulous, and that the beft is nothing better than a probable tale, artfully contrived, and plaufibly told, wherein truth and falfhood are indiftinguishably blended together. All the inftances, and

all