VOLTAIRE. 105 



affirm that no historical treatise was ever given to 

 the world more full of solid and useful instruction. 

 That there should have crept into the execution of 

 so vast a design, perhaps the most magnificent that 

 ever was conceived, errors of detail, is of no conse- 

 quence whatever to its general usefulness, any more 

 than the petty inequalities on the surface of a mirror 

 are sufficient to destroy its reflecting, and, if concave, 

 its magnifying power ; because we read the book not 

 for its minute details, but for its general views, and are 

 not injured by these faults any more than the astro- 

 nomer is by the irregularities of the speculum which 

 might impede the course of an insect, as these inac- 

 curacies might the study of one who was groping for 

 details when he should have been looking for great 

 principles. But whoever has studied history as it 

 ought to be studied, will confess his obligations to this 

 work, holding himself indebted to it for the lamp by 

 which the annals of the world are to be viewed. 



The example so happily set by the ' Essai ' was soon 

 followed by the other great writers of the age. It had 

 the most important and salutary effect upon the great 

 sera of historical composition which now opened. 

 Hume's first volume, ' The Stuarts from the Accession 

 of James I. to the Death of Charles I.,' had been published 

 in 1754, and had contained a most able appendix, 

 giving a general account of the government, and man- 

 ners, and condition of the country at James's death. 

 Whether he had seen the imperfect and partial copies 

 of the ( Essai' which had been surreptitiously printed as 

 early as the winter of 1753, some months before his own 

 was published, or the still more imperfect publications 

 of many chapters in the ' Mercure de France' several 



