VOLTAIRE. 99 



Before Voltaire's, there was no history which did 

 not confine itself to the record, more or less chronolo- 

 gical, more or less detailed, of wars and treaties, con- 

 quests or surrenders ; the succession, by death, or usurp- 

 ation, or marriage, of princes ; and the great public 

 calamities, as plague, or inundation, or fire, which 

 afflicted mankind from natural causes. The proceed- 

 ings of councils, or synods, or parliaments, were re- 

 ferred to, but chiefly as connected with the wars of the 

 countries in which they met, or the succession or the 

 deposition of the sovereigns that ruled over them. 

 No measure or proportion was observed between the 

 events thus chronicled, in respect of their various de- 

 grees of importance, still less was their influence upon 

 the condition of the people described, or even noted. 

 To deliver the facts, to describe the scenes and the 

 actors, relating the events, and giving an estimate of 

 their characters, with perhaps a few moral reflections 

 or inferences occasionally suggested by the narrative 

 was deemed the proper, and the only office of history. 

 The ancients, our masters in this as in all other walks 

 of literature, painted both scenes and men with a vivid 

 pencil ; they gave, too, chiefly in the form of speeches, 

 supposed to have been made by the personages whose 

 actions were related, their own reflections upon events, 

 or the sentiments of those personages which actuated 

 their conduct. The same thing was done by modern 

 historians more formally, as dissertations interspersed 

 with the story. But in all these writings there was 

 one common cardinal defect, one omission equally to be 

 lamented. First, the same particularity of detail, which 

 was desirable when important transactions or interest^ 



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