32 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 
Britain would be to-day. In the rugged sentences of 
Thucydides we are brought face to face with the most 
powerful intellect except Shakespeare’s that ever dealt 
with historic themes. Thence it is indeed a falling off 
to the mild, urbane, if you please superficial, Xenophon; 
but who can weary of that exquisite Attic prose, or 
read without choking the cry of the Ten Thousand 
on catching sight of the friendly sea? Then a word 
must be said of grave and wise Polybius, most trust- 
worthy of guides, and brilliant Tacitus, pithy and pun- 
gent, but now and then too fond of pointing a moral 
and needing at such times to be taken with a grain 
of salt. The pictures of the ancient world in Plu- 
tarch, though not always accurate in detail, have an 
ethical value that is beyond ‘price. We must not 
forget Gregory of Tours, the honest, credulous bishop 
whose uncouth Latin gives such a vivid portrayal of 
Merovingian times; nor charming Froissart, with his 
medizeval French, bringing before us a world of belted 
knights and jewelled dames, where common people 
have no claim to notice. A century later the states- 
manlike Commines and much slandered Machiavelli 
show us the victory of Reynard over Isegrim, of or- 
ganizing intelligence over the cruder forces of feudalism, 
while the saintly Las Casas tells of the discovery of 
America and the deeds of the Spanish conquerors, 
In Vico we see a great intellect failing in the pre- 
mature attempt to make history scientific, and then 
we pass on to Voltaire, the witchery of whose match- 
less style in his “Essai sur les Mceurs” reveals a 
grasp of universal history in perspective such as no 
man before him had attained. Finally, with a grasp 
scarcely inferior to Voltaire’s, the gigantic learning of 
