servile way, and added to it extensively from his own reflections, his large acquaintance with history, and his varied personal experience. He divides governments into democracies, aristocracies, and monarchies; and tries to detect and delineate the characteristics and conditions of each, and to show how they originate and grow, how they strengthen and consolidate themselves, and how they decline, fall, and perish. He distinguishes revolution from anarchy, the former being a change from one kind of government to another, while the latter is the extinction of government; and he accordingly finds, since the distinct forms of polity are three, that the kinds of revolution are six, each polity being capable of change into two others. All the kinds of revolution may take place from different causes, and may be prevented, or at least delayed, in different ways; and he investigates the manifold causes and counteractives of revolution with care and penetration, and, wherever his astrological superstitions do not lead him astray, with elevation and soundness of judgment. For his views on the operation of physical causes the sixth chapter of the 'Method' ought to be compared with the second, third, and fourth books of the 'Republic,' of which it seems almost like a résumé.

He even goes

Another respect in which the 'Methodus' of Bodin may interest the student of historical science is that in the eighth and ninth chapters there is a specimen of what Dugald Stewart has called conjectural or theoretical history. The eighth chapter is an inquiry into the origin of the world and the epochs of time, and the ninth into the origins of nations. Bodin exaggerates the importance, or at least is mistaken as to the proper position, of this sort of research. so far as to say that a true idea of the origin of history is the thread which can alone guide us through the labyrinth of history, whereas it is precisely what is most obscure and must remain longest unelucidated. As to the mode in which he conducts the research, there is at least as much to praise as to censure. He tries to show by the use of reason alone the truth of the Mosaic account of the origin of the world as a free creation by God in time. I am sorry to add that he also concludes that the world must have been created in September,

sun.

and that in that month the greatest events of history have taken place. He likewise maintains that there will be an end of the world, and refers in proof to the reasons given by "the noble mathematicians" Copernicus, Reinhold, and Stadius for believing that the earth will in course of time fall into the In an independent spirit he criticises and rejects the divisions of history into epochs which were prevalent in his time. He fails, however, to make a satisfactory distribution of his own. The one which he favours is based on an ethnological generalisation set forth in his fifth chapter, referring the achievements and fates of nations to their racial characteristics of body and mind. To the southern peoples he attributes special aptitudes for the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom, to those of the middle or temperate regions political ability and commercial activity, and to those of the north industrial skill and military enterprise; and accordingly, he assigns to universal history three corresponding epochs, the supremacy of southern nations ending with the birth of Christ, and that of the middle nations with the Teutonic invasions. He shows how little the statements of historians as to the origins of nations are in general to be relied on. It cannot be said, however, that he gives much evidence of insight into the principles or method of historical criticism. He insists, at considerable length, on the value of the study of etymologies as a means of throwing light on facts relative to which there is either no written testimony or only such as is false.

In the last year of the sixteenth century Lancelot Voisin de la Popelinière, a zealous Huguenot, published 'L'Histoire des Histoires, avec l'idée de l'histoire accomplie, plus le dessein de l'histoire nouvelle des François.' The work consists of three parts,—(1) a series of general and critical remarks on previous historians; (2) a delineation of the character and duty of a true historian; and (3) a statement of objections to certain fables and hypotheses current as to the origins of French history. It shows its author to have been a man of most independent judgment. The classical historians are boldly denied to be entitled to pass as standards or models for modern historians, whose advantages and resources are described as far superior to theirs;

and, at the same time, modern historians are freely censured for their credulity and incompetence. This remarkable independence of mind was, however, not supported by remarkable talent, or extraordinary research, or literary skill. The influence of Popelinière's work was, so far as I can trace it, neither wide nor deep. He had also published in 1581 a work which may be regarded as a precursor of the Universal Histories of De Thou and D'Aubigné, his 'Histoire de France, enrichie des plus notables occurrences survenues en provinces de l'Europe et pays voisins, soit en paix, soit en guerre, tant pour le fait séculier qu'ecclésiastique, depuis l'an 1550 jusqu'à ces temps' -ie., to the year 1577. De Thou consulted it with profit; D'Aubigné has spoken of it in terms of high praise.1

1 M. Auguste Poirson, who has given in the fourth volume of his 'Histoire du Règne de Henri IV. ' a full account of the historiography of the period of which he treats (pp. 272-341, 2d ed.), describes Popelinière as ce Polybe du temps, ce créateur de l'histoire générale, aujourd'hui à peu près ignoré chez nous, à notre honte."

CHAPTER II.

HISTORIOGRAPHY AND HISTORICAL REFLECTION IN FRANCE

IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: BOSSUET.

I.

HENRY IV., notwithstanding serious faults and deep inconsistencies of character, was the greatest and best French monarch of modern times. By his military skill, his political foresight, his enlightened patriotism, his enforcement of religious toleration, and the wisdom of his administration, he secured to his country internal peace, and laid the foundation of that external policy which saved Europe from the despotism of the house of Austria, and made France for long the leading nation in the world. Richelieu, under Louis XIII., proceeded on the same. lines, with a clearness of view, a persistency of purpose, a fertility of resource, and a subtilty in the employment of means for the attainment of his ends, probably never surpassed. Unfortunately he also crushed internal liberties in a way which Henry IV. would not have done, and which proved not less productive of disasters in the distant future than of immediate advantages. Mazarin adroitly carried out the plans of his predecessor, baffled personal enemies, and suppressed all efforts and possibilities of resistance to royal authority. On Mazarin's decease in 1661, Louis XIV. took all power into his own hands, and thenceforth until his death in 1715 ruled entirely according to the pleasure of his own will. During his reign France had all the glory which absolute monarchy could confer upon her, but she had no personality apart from the individuality of her sovereign. His will was her law; and he

might well say, "L'État, c'est moi." The throne was regarded with a servile and idolatrous reverence which it is difficult now to realise. The king was feared and obeyed as if he were a god. The daily atmosphere in which he lived was one filled. with the incense of semi-divine honours. Under the shadow of the throne, and in close alliance with it, there flourished the tyranny of the Church. By the mass of the nation no opposition was offered, or so much as thought of, to either; the most abject submission was demanded and unmurmuringly rendered. Disbelief and discontent were not, indeed, extinct, but they dared not avow themselves; they kept silence or expressed themselves in guarded whispers.

The history of France in the seventeenth century was substantially the history of the growth and triumph of absolutism, -an absolutism guided by statesmen of genius, served by great administrators and famed generals, and glorified by orators, authors, and artists of classic excellence and world-wide renown. This fact profoundly influenced the development of historiography in France during the century. The Muse of history was gradually enticed and constrained to become a lady of the Court. She was taught to attach supreme value to dignity of deportment and elegance of speech, to feel more ashamed of rusticity than of mortal sin, and to be more afraid of unpoliteness than of untruthfulness. But, it must be added, she never felt fully at home at Court, and prospered there much less than most of her sisters. The historical literature of the age of Louis XIV. could not, for example, compare in brilliance with its oratorical or dramatic literature; indeed, royal patronage, even when most potent and munificent, called into existence singularly few historical works entitled to be ranked as literature. But, under the constraint and tuition of monarchs and ministers, French historiography gradually lost the originality and audacity, and the sporadic and fragmentary, passionate and polemic, character which it had in the sixteenth century. It gradually grew tame, methodical, laboriously erudite, respectful and even servile towards authority.

The sixteenth century was predominantly an age of pamphlets and occasional writings meant for defence or attack. The seventeenth century was predominantly an age of collec