in an age of science and arts, while
letters still held up their heads in Greece; consequently, when the
great outlines of truth, I mean events, might be expected to be
established; at that very period a new deluge of error burst upon
the world. Cristian monks and saints laid truth waste; and a mock
sun rose at Rome, when the Roman sun sunk at Constantinople. Virtues
and vices were rated by the standard of bigotry; and the militia of
the church became the only historians. The best princes were
represented as monsters; the worst, at least the most useless, were
deified, according as they depressed or exalted turbulent and
enthusiastic prelates and friars. Nay, these men were so destitute
of temper and common sense, that they dared to suppose that common
sense would never revisit the earth: and accordingly wrote with so
little judgment, and committed such palpable forgeries, that if we
cannot discover what really happened in those ages, we can at least
he very sure what did not. How many general persecutions does the
church record, of which there is not the smallest trace? What
donations and charters were forged, for which those holy persons
would lose their ears, if they were in this age to present them in
the most common court of judicature? Yet how long were these
impostors the only persons who attempted to write history!

But let us lay aside their interested lies, and consider how far
they were qualified in other respects to transmit faithful memoirs
to posterity. In the ages I speak of, the barbarous monkish ages,
the shadow of learning that existed was confined to the clergy: they
generally wrote in Latin, or in verse, and their compositions in
both were truly barbarous. The difficulties of rhime, and the want
of correspondent terms in Latin, were no small impediments to the
severe nvarch of truth. But there were worse obstacles to encounter.
Europe was in a continual state of warfare. Little princes and great
lords were constantly skirmishing and struggling for trifling
additions of territory, or wasting each others borders. Geography
was very imperfect; no police existed; roads, such as they were,
were dangerous; and posts were not established. Events were only
known by rumour, from pilgrims, or by letters carried In couriers to
the parties interested: the public did not enjoy even those fallible
vehicles of intelligence, newspapers. In this situation did monks,
at twenty, fifty, an hundred, nay, a thousand mile