are told in as many different ways as there are narrators; and this, notwithstanding it was fought in the presence of a crowd of witnesses, who had nothing to do but look on, and note what passed before their eyes. The only facts in which all agree, are, there was a tournament, and that neither party gained the advantage. So much for history!

Something it is that in something all should agree -near as that minute aliquid may be to a mere negative nescio quid. Thereby the foundations of history are laid, such as, and shadowy as, they are. There is a sort of substratum obtainable, after all, out of this medley of internecine narratives, and thereupon the jaded, eyesore, brainsick historian is fain to set up his rest. It is like the practical conclusion come to by the Venetian Senate, in Shakspeare, when a conflict of statistics bewilders their calculations.

Duke. There is no composition in these news

1 Sen.

That gives them credit.

Indeed, they are disproportion'd:
My letters say, a hundred and seven galleys.
Duke. And mine, a hundred and forty.

2 Sen.

And mine, two hundred ;
But though they jump not on a just account
As in these cases, where the aim reports,
'Tis oft with difference, yet do they all confirm
A Turkish fleet, and bearing up to Cyprus.

To some such practical deduction, after eliminations wholesale, must the most sceptical of historical critics come, if such a thing as history is to remain in

esse, or in posse even, in rerum naturâ. Even Raleigh knew to the last that there had been a scene, of some sort, under his window-though the details of it, like the terms of an equation, had been made to cancel each other, right and left,—and x alone remained, a still unknown quantity.

La Bruyère puts the standing difficulty in his best lively way. "Une chose arrive aujourd'hui, et presque sous nos yeux; cent personnes qui l'ont vue la racontent en cent façons différentes; celui-ci, s'il est écouté, la dira encore d'une manière qui n'a pas été dite. Quelle créance donc pourrais-je donner à des faits qui sont anciens et éloignés de nous par plusieurs siècles? Quel fondement dois-je faire sur les plus graves historiens? Que devient l'histoire ?"

The inevitable oversights and mistakes of history are a common-place with even the most commonplace thinkers. All that we know is, nothing can be known, is the despairing ultimatum of many a disgusted inquirer.

Thou know'st, of things perform'd so long agone,
This latter age hears little troth or none,

Tasso reminds his Muse, when buckling himself to the toil of historicising in immortal verse the Recovery of Jerusalem by Godfrey and his peers. "By coach to my Lord Crewe's," writes Mr. Pepys one day, in his well-kept diurnal: "Here I find they are in doubt where the Duke of Buckingham is; which makes me mightily reflect on the uncertainty of all history, when, in a business of this moment,

and of this day's growth, we cannot tell the truth.” Mr. Barham rhymes and reasons con amore on the pros and cons of this vexed question at large:

I've heard, I confess, with no little surprise,
English history call'd a farrago of lies;

And a certain Divine,

A connexion of mine,

Who ought to know better, as some folks opine,
Is apt to declare,

Leaning back in his chair,

With a sort of a smirking, self-satisfied air,
That "all that's recorded in Hume and elsewhere,
Of our early Annalës

A trumpery tale is,

Like the Bold Captain Smith's, and the Luckless Miss Bailey's— That old Roger Hovedon, and Ralph de Diceto,

And others (whose names should I try to repeat o

ver, well I'm assured

you would put in

Though all holy friars,

your veto),

Were very great liars.

And raised stories faster than Grissell and Peto:

*

*

*

That, in short, all the 'facts' in the Decem Scriptores,
Are nothing at all but sheer humbugging stories."

The common remark as to the "utility of reading history" being one day made in Johnson's presence, the sage remarked: "We must consider how very little history there is; I mean, real authentic history. That certain kings reigned, and certain battles were fought, we can depend upon as true; but all the colouring, all the philosophy of history, is conjecture." Mr. Arthur Pendennis fancies, for his part, that the speeches attributed in his veracious Chroni

cles of a Most Respectable Family, to Clive Newcome, the Colonel, and the rest, are as authentic as the orations in Sallust or Livy. "You tell the tales as you can, and state the facts as you think they must have been. In this manner, Mr. James, Titus Livius, Professor Alison, Robinson Crusoe, and all historians proceeded. Blunders there must be in the best of these narratives, and more asserted than they can possibly know or vouch for.”

Don't read history to me, for that can't be true, Sir Robert Walpole is reported to have said, when asked to choose the book he would like to listen to. His son Horace appears to have inherited the paternal pyrrhonism in an almost aggravated form. His letters abound with pungent proofs of this. We know past times very imperfectly," he writes, in one place, "and how should we, when few know even the present, and they who do, have good reason for not being communicative? I have lived till I think I know nothing at all." Again, three or four years later: "Whether like the history of darker ages, falsehood will become history, and then distant periods conjecture that we have transmitted very blundering relations. . . . . [I know not;] but when I know so little of what has passed before my own eyes," he is referring to the riots of 1780,-"I shall not guess how posterity will form their opinions." Again: "The multiplicity of lies coined every day only perplexes, not instructs. When I send you falsehoods, at least I think or believe them probable at the time, and correct myself afterwards, when I

...

perceive I have been misled. I, who am now in no secrets, trust to facts alone, as far as they come to light. Mercy on future historians, whose duty it will be to sift the ashes of all the tales with which the narratives of the present war have been crammed. Some will remain inexplicable." To another and reverend correspondent he writes: "I have long said, that if a paragraph in a newspaper contains a word of truth, it is sure to be accompanied with two or three blunders; yet, who will believe that papers published in the face of the whole town should be nothing but magazines of lies, every one of which fifty persons could contradict and disprove? Yet so it certainly is, and future history will probably be ten times falser than all preceding." Three years later he is telling Mann of the Westminster riots (1785) at Fox's election, &c., and of a squabble between his neighbour the new Marquis of Buckingham, and two young rioters of rank, of which quite contradictory stories are told: "In short, in such a season of party violence, one cannot learn the truth of what happens in the next street: future historians, however, will know it exactly, and what is more, people will believe them!" Four years afterwards he is entertaining Lady Ossory with the rumoured items of the Princess Amelia's Will, and the newspaper assumptions and comments thereupon,whence this reflection, in the old strain and to the old tune, ensues: "History, I believe, seldom contains much truth; but should our daily lying chronicles exist and be consulted, the annals of these