46 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



hard's Annals, The Chronicle of Lambert of Herzfeld, Erasmus's Letters, 

 or the Memoirs of Baron de Marbot. Yet we take the newspaper report 

 none too seriously, but sedulously discount even its most precise 

 details. Not long ago I read in a Chicago newspaper a brief biography 

 of a friend of mine who had been elected to an important academic 

 position. The writer of the notice lived in the same city with the one 

 whose life he described, and his information was such that he could 

 hardly have received it from any one except my friend himself or one 

 of his family. A report prepared under similar conditions in regard 

 to Hugh Capet at the time of his accession to power would be regarded 

 by the historian as a precious document of unimpeachable veracity. 

 Yet the newspaper biography contained a dozen inexcusable, almost 

 inexplicable blunders. 



The historical investigator is constantly tempted faute de mieux 

 to take his sources far too seriously. Sometimes he is awakened from 

 his dogmatic slumber by the appearance of a new source which 

 exposes the fallacies of one hitherto revered for its accuracy and 

 conscientious detail. No one, for example, can read the simple and 

 sincere account of Marie Antoinette as she appears in the Memoirs 

 of Madame de Campan without accepting it as essentially true, yet 

 the publication by Arneth of the correspondence of the Count de 

 Mercy with the queen's mother puts the poor girl in quite another 

 light. Why should we receive the Life of Charlemagne by Einhard 

 with greater confidence than the Memoirs of Madame de Campan? 

 Einhard, as was long ago pointed out, was fascinated by the style of 

 Suetonius, from whom in his enthusiasm he even goes so far as to 

 borrow convenient phraseology. Here surely we find an invasion of 

 the literary spirit, which might easily deflect the writer from the 

 particular aims which are most esteemed in a biographer. 



The historian has, however, no accurate means of representing 

 his own dubiety, strongly as he may be conscious of it. Much less can 

 he impart his doubts and uncertainties to his reader. For the singular 

 details of the death and burial of Alaric, which appear even in our 

 elementary text-books, we have only the report of the Goth, Jordanes, 

 an ignorant writer of the meanest ability who lived over a century 

 later than the events he narrates. He appears to be guilty of the most 

 palpable errors, in those cases where he can be checked by Zosimus, 

 who is generally regarded as a trifle more conscientious than the Goth. 

 Should there not be some way of indicating cleat ly the different 

 degree of certainty that we enjoy for this event, and, let us say, the 

 circumstances which accompanied the death of Charles the First of 

 England or of President McKinley? Portions of the Bible have been 

 ingeniously printed in several colors, so that the reader may distin- 

 guish the several sources which have been used in the narrative. 

 Should a similar system be introduced in our general historical works, 



