I have very little knowledge of the historians of the Renaissance or of
those prior to the French Revolution. Apart from the chroniclers of
individual exploits, such as López de Ayala, Brantôme, and the others,
they are wholly colourless, and either pseudo-Roman or pseudo-Greek.
Even Machiavelli has a personal, Italian side, which is mocking and
incisive--and this is all that is worth while in him--and he has a
pretentious pseudo-Roman side, which is unspeakably tiresome.
Generally considered, the more carefully composed and smoothly varnished
the history, the duller it will be found; while the more personal
revelations it contains, the more engaging. Most readers today, for
example, prefer Bernal Díaz del Castillo's _True History of the
Conquest of New Spain_ to Solis's _History of the Conquest of
Mexico_. One is the book of a soldier, who had a share in the deeds
described, and who reveals himself for what he is, with all his
prejudices, vanities and arrogance; the other is a scholar's attempt to
imitate a classic history and to maintain a monotonous music throughout
his paragraphs.
Practically all the historians who have followed the French Revolution
have individual character, and some have too much of it, as has Carlyle.
They distort their subject until it becomes a pure matter of fantasy, or
mere literature, or sinks even to the level of a family discussion.
Macaulay's moral pedantry, Thiers's cold and repulsive cretinism, the
melodramatic, gesticulatory effusiveness of Michelet are all typical
styles.
Historical bazaars _à la_ Cesare Cantù may be put on one side, as
belonging to an inferior genre. They remind me of those great nineteenth
century world's fairs, vast, miscellaneous and exhausting.
As for the German historians, they are not translated, so I do not know
them. I have read only a few essays of Simmel, which I think extremely
keen, and Stewart Chamberlain's book upon the foundations of the
nineteenth century, which, if the word France were to be substituted for
the word Germany, might easily have been the production of an advanced
nationalist of the _Action Française_.