The Memoires de Bailly 23 



works that did not exist at the time when he wrote.^ There are 

 memoires and memoires. The most of those upon the French 

 revolution were composed as Bailly composed his journal, al- 

 though, as a rule, the writers did not show the same good judg- 

 ment in selecting and in using their sources ; some drew largely 

 upon the memory — Grace Dalrymple Elliott, for example, in her 

 Journal of My Life during the French Rcvohition- — and are 

 extremely unreliable, at times, absolutely worthless. Just what 

 the value of each mcnwire is can be determined only after a 

 careful critical study. 



'The editors of the edition of the Memoires published at Paris in 1822, 

 state in a footnote to page 311, that the details of a certain incident related 

 by Bailly on pages 310, 311 were drawn from the 3/oniteiir of September 

 15, 1789. As the Moniteur of that date did not exist until after the death 

 of Bailly, it was not possible for him to make use of it. The history of the 

 origin of the numbers of the Moui/ei/r that precede November 24, 1789, is a 

 sealed book to many of those who make use of them. 



^Journal of My Life during the French Revolution, by Grace Dalrymple 

 Elliot, London, 1859. It would be somew-hat diflBcult to find a work writ- 

 ten by an ej-e witness that contains as many errors to the page as are con- 

 tained in the first chapter of this work. 



353 



