was sure that "toutes ces sottises qu'on appelle l'histoire ne peuvent
valoir quelquechose qu'avec les ornements du goût," and that it was
really all right to let Pompey win the battle of Pharsalia, "si cela
pouvait arrondir tant soit peu la phrase." Now it is certainly de-
sirable that historical work should be undertaken in scholarly
fashion, but since literary merit is often dissociated from historical
thought, the latter, even if it is expressed in a rough or careless
literary form, still preserves the virtue of its thought.

Neither is an historical work to be judged by the greater or
less number and correctness of the facts it contains, if only for
the obvious reason that there are very copious and correct col-
lections of facts which are quite clearly not histories, and others
which are sparkling with historical intelligence but poorly
equipped with information, or even littered with facts that are
unreliable, legendary or fabulous: one only has to think of Vico
Scienza Nuova. Anthologies of information are chronicles, notes,
memoirs, annals, but they are not history; and even if they are
critically put together, and every item has its origin quoted or
its evidence shrewdly sifted, they can never, on the plane on
which they move, however hard they try, rise above unceasing
quotation of things said and things written. They fail to become
truth to us just at that point where history demands an assertion
of truth arising out of our intimate experience. It is certainly
desirable that the facts used in an historical work should have
been carefully verified, if only to deprive the pedants of an arm
which they insidiously and not unsuccessfully use to discredit
vigorous and genuine historical writing; and then also because
exactitude is in any case a moral duty. But in theory and in fact
the two things are different and they may be and are separate,
and neither the dull metal of the chronicles nor the highly
polished metal of the philologists will ever be of equal value
with the gold of the historian even if that is concealed in dross.

Finally, an historical book should not be judged by how much
or how little it stirs the imagination, proves moving, exciting,
exemplary or even curious and amusing, because dramas and
novels can make a similar impression and a history book need

-16-