ases the examination of the plagiarist's
mistakes has made it possible to determine even this style of
handwriting, the size, and the manner of arrangement of the manuscript
source. The deductions of the investigation of sources, like those of
textual criticism, are sometimes supported by obvious palaeographical
considerations.

[87] The Investigations of Julien Havet (_Questions merovingiennes_,
Paris, 1896, 8vo) are regarded as models. Very difficult problems are
there solved with faultless elegance. It is also well worth while to
read the memoirs in which M. L. Delisle has discussed questions of
origin. It is in the treatment of these questions that the most
accomplished scholars win their triumphs.

[88] See the edition of H. R. Luard (vol. i., London, 1890, 8vo) in the
_Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores_. Matthew of Westminster's
_Flores historiarum_ figure in the Roman "Index," because of the
passages borrowed from the _Chronica majora_ of Matthew of Paris, while
the _Chronica majora_ themselves have escaped censure.

[89] It would be instructive to draw up a list of the celebrated
historical works, such as Augustin Thierry's _Histoire de la Conquete de
l'Angleterre par les Normands_, whose authority has been completely
destroyed after the authorship of their sources has been studied.
Nothing amuses the gallery more than to see an historian convicted of
having built a theory on falsified documents. Nothing is more calculated
to cover an historian with confusion than to find that he has fallen
into the error of treating seriously documents which are no documents at
all.

[90] One of the crudest (and commonest) forms of "uncritical method" is
that which consists in employing as if they were documents, and placing
on the same footing as documents, the utterances of modern authors on
the subject of documents. Novices do not make a sufficient distinction,
in the works of modern authors, between what is added to the original
source and what is taken from it.

[91] See a list of examples in Bernheim's _Handbuch_, pp. 283, 289.

[92] It is because it is necessary to subject documents of mediaeval and
ancient history to the most searching criticism in respect of authorship
that the study of antiquity and the middle ages passes for more
"scientific" than that of modern times. The truth is, that it is merely
hampered by more preliminary difficulties.

[93] _Revue philosophique_, 1887, ii. p. 170.

[94] The