_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 authorities, 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 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 establishment of the
Portuguese in India, written by our countrymen, but not one of them has
made us acquainted with the different governments of that country, with
its religious antiquities, Brahmins, disciples of St. John, Guebers, and
Banians. Some letters of Xavier and his successors have, it is true,
been preserved to us. We have had histories of the Indies composed at
Paris, from the accounts of those missionaries who were unacquainted
with the language of the Brahmins. We have it repeated, in a hundred
works, that the Indians worship the devil. The chaplains of a company of
merchants quit our country under these impressions, and, as soon as they
perceive on the coast some symbolical figures, they fail not to write
home that they are the portraits and likenesses of the devil, that they
are in the devil's empire, and that they are going to engage in battle
with him. They do not reflect that we are the real worshippers of the
devil Mammon, and that we travel six thousand leagues from our native
land to offer our vows at his shrine, and to obtain the grant of some
portion of his treasures.
As to those who hire themselves out at Paris to some bookseller in the
Rue de St. Jacques, and at so much per job, and who are ordered to write
a history of Japan, Canada, or the Canaries, as the case requires and
opportunity suggests, from the memoirs of a few Capuchin friars--to such
I have nothing to say.
It is sufficient, if it be clearly understood, that the method which
would be proper in writing a history of our own country is not suitable
in describing the discoveries of the new world; that we should not write
on a small city as on a great empire; and that the private history of a
prince should be composed in a very different manner from the history of
France and England.
If you have nothing to tell us, but that on the banks of the Oxus and
the Jaxartes, one barbarian has been succeeded by another barbarian, in
what respect do you benefit the public?
These rules are well known; but the art of writing history well will
always be very uncommon. It obviously requires a style grave, pure,
varied, and smooth. But we may say with respect to rules for writing
history, as in reference to those for all the intellectual arts--there
are many precepts, but few masters.