peared
in any modern language.[11] The instances that seem to make against
this remark will be found to confirm it. They consist of memoirs,
contemporary documents, in short materials for history, but not
history itself. From Froissart and De Comines, or even from the
earlier monastic writers to St. Simon (who was just finishing his
incomparable Memoirs), history with wide outlook and the conception of
social progress and interconnection of events did not exist. Yet
history in its simple forms is one of the most spontaneous of human
achievements. Stories of mighty deeds, of the prowess and death of
heroes, are among the earliest productions of even semi-civilised
man--the earliest subjects of epic and lyric verse. But this
rudimentary form is never more than biographical. With increasing
complexity of social evolution it dies away, and history proper, as
distinct from annals and chronicle, does not arise till circumstances
allow of general and synthetic views, till societies can be surveyed
from a sufficient distance and elevation for their movements to be
discerned. Thucydides, Livy, and Tacitus do not appear till Greece and
Home have reached their highest point of homogeneous national life.
The tardy dawn of history in the modern world was owing to its immense
complexity. Materials also were wanting. They gradually emerged out of
manuscript all over Europe, during what may be called the great pedant
age (1550-1650), under the direction of meritorious antiquaries,
Camden, Savile, Duchesne, Gale, and others. Still official documents
and state papers were wanting, and had they been at hand would hardly
have been used with competence. The national and religious
limitations were still too marked and hostile to permit a free survey
over the historic field. The eighteenth century, though it opened with
a bloody war, was essentially peaceful in spirit: governments made
war, but men and nations longed for rest. The increased interest in
the past was shown by the publication nearly contemporary of the great
historic collections of Rymer (A.D. 1704), Leibnitz (1707), and
Muratori (1723). Before the middle of the century the historic muse
had abundant oil to feed her lamp. Still the lamp would probably not
have been lighted but for the singular pass to which French thought
had come.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: Mezeray's great history of France is next to valueless
till he reaches the sixteenth century, that was a period borderi