III. — The Memoires de Bailly 



BY FRED MORROW FLING 



One of the striking characteristics of the scientific literature 

 of modern history, sharply contrasting in this respect with the 

 literature of ancient and medieval history, is the extreme paucity 

 of critical source-studies. Careful, exhaustive criticisms of the 

 sources of Greek, Roman, and medieval history abound, while 

 some of the most frequently used sources of modern history have 

 never formed the subject of a critical monograph. The explana- 

 tion of this lamentable condition is to be found, to some extent, 

 in the lack of training and tradition among the workers in mod- 

 ern history, to some extent in the thoughtlessness of the investi- 

 gator, who does not realize the wisdom of formulating for those 

 who shall come after him the results of his critical studies ; but 

 chiefly it is due to the belief prevalent among the writers of 

 modern history that the sources that they employ do not need to 

 be criticised. This belief may be attributed to the fact that much 

 of the critical work in connection with the sources of modern 

 history is so easy that it is largely unconscious; but, easy or 

 difficult, the critical process should always be gone through with 

 and that, too, consciously. 



Perhaps no period of modern history has suffered more from 

 this dilettanteism, as it might properly be called, than the French 

 revolution. There is a real need to-day of a critical monograph 

 literature upon the memoires and contemporary histories of this 

 important period of European history. Both the past and the 

 present attitude of historians toward this material has been 

 largely unscientific. The tendency, until a few years since, was 

 to accept it as valuable en bloc, without criticism ; the tendency 

 to-day seems to be to reject it en bloc, equally without criticism. 

 The last tendency is, to be sure, the less harmful, but it is not 

 strictly scientific. Memoires and contemporary histories can not 



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