V. But what happened to Quintus Curtius is more extraordinary than any
thing we have hitherto mentioned. This author’s history of Alexander
made its first appearance about three centuries ago; the manuscript
having been found in the library of Saint Victor. It is not yet known
with any certainty who Quintus Curtius was, nor in what time he lived.
Some believe he was contemporary with Augustus, others with Claudius,
others with Vespasian, and others with Trajan; according as his stile
appears to them to approach nearer to, or differ more from, the antient
purity of the Latin idiom; and there are not wanting those, who think
that such a man as Quintus Curtius never existed, and that this was a
fictitious name, under which some modern author had concealed himself,
in hopes that his history would be better received by annexing to it a
name resembling that of an antient writer; and some again have attributed
this work to Petrarch. One of the strongest foundations on which they
build this conjecture, is, that you cannot find Quintus Curtius quoted by
any author, who has wrote within the fourteen hundred years immediately
posterior to the reign of Augustus. Notwithstanding this, the purity of
the stile has such weight with others, as to make them judge that it is
full that time since any one could write so pure Latin as is contained
in the language of that book; and therefore they suppose the author of
this history was contemporary with some of the first Cæsars. But be this
as it may, the history, which goes under the title of Quintus Curtius,
continued to be universally applauded for the space of three centuries;
when at length a modern critic set himself to scrutinize and examine it
attentively, and found it to be full of substantial defects.
VI. This was the famous John Le Clerc, who weaves into the end of his
second volume on the Art of Criticism, a long examination of Quintus
Curtius, and arraigns and charges him, proving the accusation at the
same time, with having been deficient in the following requisites:
that he was very ignorant of astronomy and geography: that, for the
sake of accumulating in his history many marvellous relations, he
wrote many fables: that he described some things ill, and fell into
manifest contradictions: that he inserted useless accounts, and omitted
necessary ones: that, in order to display his eloquence, he incurred the
impropriety of putting excellent harangues into the mouths of men, who
had but little pretensions to oratory: that he gave Greek names to the
most remote rivers of Asia: that he omitted the circumstance of dates
or time in his relations of events: that he had chosen a stile which
was better suited to a declaimer or an orator than an historian: that,
finally, he had been more the panegyrist than the historian of Alexander,
and had celebrated his damnable ambition, as if it had been an heroic
virtue.
VII. Truly, these are many and grave defects, to be imputed to a man
of the supreme credit of Curtius, and would even be thought such, if
they were charged on a writer of the middle class. But all that we can
infer from hence is, that either the critics have been very severe in
their censure, or else, that the task of writing a history free from
defects is an exceeding arduous one. But it appearing to me, that the
accusation of Le Clerc is well supported, and just in every part of it, I
am inclined to think, that the most elevated genius who applies himself
to the occupation of an historian, can never be secure from falling into
considerable defects; and to confirm this sentiment, I have quoted the
example of Quintus Curtius.