we should have materials that would suggest or verify those original principles, the discovery of which constitutes the real use of history.

But this was not to be. Unhappily for the interests of knowledge, the march of French civilization was, at this period, suddenly checked. Soon after the middle of the seventeenth century, that lamentable change took place in France, which gave a new turn to the destinies of the nation. The reaction which the spirit of inquiry underwent, and the social and intellectual circumstances which, by bringing the Fronde to a premature close, prepared the way for Louis XIV., have been described in a former part of this volume, where I have attempted to indicate the general effects of the disastrous movement. It now remains for me to point out how this retrogressive tendency opposed obstacles to the improvement of historical literature, and prevented authors, not only from relating with honesty what was passing around them, but also from understanding events which had occurred before their time.

The most superficial students of French literature must be struck by the dearth of historians during that long period in which Louis XIV. held the reins of government.30 To this, the personal peculiarities of the king greatly contributed. His education had been shamefully neglected; and as he never had the energy to repair its deficiencies, he all his life remained ignorant of many things with which even princes are usually familiar.31 Of the course of past events he knew literally nothing, and he took no interest in any history except the history of his own exploits. Among a free people, this indifference on the part of the sovereign could never have produced injurious results; indeed, as we have already seen, the absence of royal patronage is, in a highly civilized country, the most favourable condition of literature. But at the accession of Louis XIV., the liberties of the French were still too young, and the habits of independent thought too recent, to enable them to bear up against that combination of the crown and the church, which was directed against them. The French, becoming every day more servile, at length sunk so low, that, by the end of the seventeenth cen

30 This is noticed in Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. xxvii. pp. 181, 182; also in Villemain, Littérature Française, vol. ii. pp. 29, 30. Compare D'Argenson, Réflexions sur les Historiens François, in Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, vol. xxviii. p. 627, with Boulainvilliers, Ancien Gouvernement de la France, vol. i. p. 174.

31"Le jeune Louis XIV n'avait reçu aucune éducation intellectuelle." Capefique's Richelieu, Mazarin et la Fronde, vol. ii. p. 245. On the education of Louis XIV., which was as shamefully neglected as that of our George III., see Lettres inédites de Maintenon, vol. ii. p. 369; Duclos, Mém. Secrets, vol. i. pp. 167, 168; Mém. de Brienne, vol. i. pp. 391-393.

tury, they seemed to have lost even the wish of resistance. The king, meeting no opposition, endeavoured to exercise over the intellect of the country an authority equal to that with which he conducted its government.32 In all the great questions of religion and of politics, the spirit of inquiry was stifled, and no man was allowed to express an opinion unfavourable to the existing state of things. As the king was willing to endow literature, he naturally thought that he had a right to its services. Authors, who were fed by his hand, were not to raise . their voices against his policy. They received his wages, and they were bound to do the bidding of him who paid them. When Louis assumed the government, Mezeray was still living; though I need hardly say that his great work was published before this system of protection and patronage came into play. The treatment to which he, the great historian of France, was now subjected, was a specimen of the new arrangement. He received from the crown a pension of four thousand francs; but when he, in 1668, published an abridgment of his History, it was intimated to him, that some remarks upon the tendency of taxation were likely to cause offence in high quarters. As, however, it was soon found that Mezeray was too honest and too fearless to retract what he had written, it was determined to have recourse to intimidation, and half of his pension was taken from him.34 But as this did not produce a proper effect, another order was issued, which deprived him of the remaining half; and thus early, in this bad reign, there was set an example of punishing a man for writing with honesty upon a subject in which, of all others, honesty is the first essential. 35

33

32 On his political maxims, see Lemontey, Etablissement de Louis XIV, pp. 325327, 407, 408. The eloquent remarks made by M. Ranke upon an Italian despotism, are admirably applicable to his whole system: "Sonderbare Gestalt menschlichen Dinge! Die Kräfte des Landes bringen den Hof hervor, der Mittelpunkt des Hofes ist der Fürst, das letzte Product des gesammten Lebens ist zuletzt das Selbstgefühl des Fürsten." Die Päpste, vol. ii. p. 266.

33 His Abrégé Chronologique was published in 1668, in three volumes quarto. Biog. Univ. vol. xxviii. p. 510. Le Long (Bibliothèque Historique, vol. iii. p. lxxxv.) says, that it was only allowed to be published in consequence of a "privilège" which Mezeray had formerly obtained. But there seems to have been some difficulty, of which these writers are not aware; for Patin, in a letter dated Paris, 23 December, 1664, speaks of it as being then in the press: "on imprime ici en grand-in-quarto un Abrégé de l'Histoire de France, par M. Mezeray." Lettres de Patin, vol. iii. p. 503: compare p. 665. It long remained an established school-book: see D'Argenson's Essay, in Mem. de l'Académie, vol. xxviii. p. 635; and Works of Sir William Temple, vol. iii. p. 70.

Barrière, Essai sur les Mours du Dix-septième Siècle, prefixed to Mém. de Brienne, vol. i. pp. 129, 130, where reference is made to his original correspondence with Colbert. This treatment of Mezeray is noticed, but imperfectly, in Boulainvilliers, Hist. de l'Ancien Gouvernement, vol. i. p. 196; in Lemontey, Etablissement de Louis, p. 331 ; and in Palissot, Mém. pour l'Hist. de Lit. vol. ii. p. 161.

In 1685 was published at Paris what was called an improved edition of Mez

Such conduct as this, showed what historians were to expect from the government of Louis XIV. Several years later, the king took another opportunity of displaying the same spirit. Fénélon had been appointed preceptor to the grandson of Louis, whose early vices his firmness and judgment did much to repress.36 But a single circumstance was thought sufficient to outweigh the immense service which Fénélon thus rendered to the royal family, and, if his pupil had come to the throne, would have rendered prospectively to the whole of France. His celebrated romance, Telemachus, was published in 1699, as it appears, without his consent.37 The king suspected that, under the guise of a fiction, Fénélon intended to reflect on the conduct of government. It was in vain that the author denied so dangerous an imputation. The indignation of the king was not to be appeased. He banished Fénélon from the court; and would never again admit to his presence a man, whom he suspected of even insinuating a criticism upon the measures adopted by the administration of the country.3

38

If the king could, on mere suspicion, thus treat a great writer, who had the rank of an archbishop and the reputation of a saint, it was not likely that he would deal more tenderly with inferior men. In 1681, the Abbé Primi, an Italian, then residing at Paris, was induced to write a history of Louis XIV. The king, delighted with the idea of perpetuating his own fame, conferred several rewards upon the author; and arrangements were made that the work should be composed in Italian, and immediately translated into French. But when the history appeared, there were found in it some circumstances which it was thought ought not to have been disclosed. On this account, Louis caused the book to be suppressed, the papers of the author to be seized, and the author himself to be thrown into the Bastille.39

eray's History; that is, an edition from which the honest remarks were expunged, See Le Long, Bibliothèque Historique, vol. ii. p. 53, vol. iv. p. 381; and Brunet, Manuel du Libraire, vol. iii. p. 383, Paris, 1843. Hampden, who knew Mezeray, has recorded an interesting interview he had with him in Paris, when the great historian lamented the loss of the liberties of France. See Calamy's Life of Himself, vol. i. pp. 392, 393.

Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. xxvi. pp. 240, 241.

* "Par l'infidélité d'un domestique chargé de transcrire le manuscrit." Biog. Univ. vol. xiv. p. 289; and see Peignot, Dict. des Livres condamnés, vol. i. pp. 134, 135. It was suppressed in France, and appeared in Holland in the same year, 1699. Lettres de Sevigné, vol. vi. pp. 434, 435 note.

35 "Louis XIV prit le Télémaque pour une personnalité... Comme il (Fénélon) avait déplu au roi, il mourut dans l'exil." Lerminier, Philos. du Droit, vol. ii. pp. 219, 220; and see Siècle de Louis XIV, chap. xxxii., in Euvres de Voltaire, vol. xx p. 307.

39 These circumstances are related in a letter from Lord Preston, dated Paris, 22 July, 1682, and printed in Dalrymple's Memoirs, pp. 141, 142, appendix to vol. i.

Those, indeed, were dangerous times for independent men; times when no writer on politics or religion was safe, unless he followed the fashion of the day, and defended the opinions of the court and the church. The king, who had an insatiable thirst for what he called glory," laboured to degrade contemporary historians into mere chroniclers of his own achievements. He ordered Racine and Boileau to write an account of his reign; he settled a pension upon them, and he promised to supply them with the necessary materials." But even Racine and Boileau, poets though they were, knew that they would fail in satisfying his morbid vanity; they, therefore, received the pension, but omitted to compose the work for which the pension was conferred. So notorious was the unwillingness of able men to meddle with history, that it was thought advisable to beat up literary recruits from foreign countries. The case of the Abbé Primi has just been mentioned; he was an Italian, and only one year later a similar offer was made to an Englishman. In 1683, Burnet visited France, and was given to understand that he might receive a pension, and that he might even enjoy the honour of conversing with Louis himself, provided he would write a history of the royal affairs; such history, it was carefully added, being on the "side" of the French king.42

Under such circumstances as these, it is no wonder that history, so far as its great essentials are concerned, should have rapidly declined during the power of Louis XIV. It became, as some think, more elegant; but it certainly became more feeble. The language in which it was composed was worked with great care, the periods neatly arranged, the epithets soft and harmonious. For that was a polite and obsequious age, full of reverence, of duty, and of admiration. In history, as it was then written, every king was a hero, and every bishop was a saint. All unpleasant truths were suppressed; nothing harsh or unkind was to be told. These docile and submissive senti

The account given by M. Peignot (Livres condamnés, vol. ii. pp. 52, 53) is incomplete, he being evidently ignorant of the existence of Lord Preston's letter.

40 An able writer has well called him "glorieux plutôt qu'appréciateur de la vraie gloire." Flassan, Histoire de la Diplomatie Française, vol. iv. p. 399.

"Vous

41 In 1677, Madame de Sevigné writes from Paris respecting the king: savez bien qu'il a donné deux mille écus de pension à Racine et à Despréaux, en leur commandant de travailler à son histoire, dont il aura soin de donner des Mémoires." Lettres de Sevigné, vol. iii. p. 362. Compare Eloge de Valincourt, in Euvres de Fontenelle, vol. vi. p. 383; and Hughes's Letters, edit. 1773, vol. ii. pp. 74, 75.

42 Burnet relates this with delightful simplicity: "Others more probably thought that the king, hearing I was a writer of history, had a mind to engage me to write on his side. I was told a pension would be offered me. But I made no steps towards it; for though I was offered an audience of the king, I excused it, since I could not have the honour to be presented to that king by the minister of England." Burnet's Own Time, vol. ii. p. 385.

ments being expressed in an easy and flowing style, gave to history that air of refinement, that gentle, unobtrusive gait, which made it popular with the classes that it flattered. But even so, while its form was polished, its life was extinct. All its independence was gone, all its honesty, all its boldness. The noblest and the most difficult department of knowledge, the study of the movements of the human race, was abandoned to every timid and creeping intellect that cared to cultivate it. There were Boulainvilliers, and Daniel, and Maimbourg, and Varillas, and Vertot, and numerous others, who in the reign of Louis XIV. were believed to be historians; but whose histories have scarcely any merit, except that of enabling us to appreciate the period in which such productions were admired, and the system of which they were the representatives.

To give a complete view of the decline of historical literature in France, from the time of Mezeray until early in the eighteenth century, would require a summary of every history which was written; for all of them were pervaded by the same spirit. But, as this would occupy much too large a space, it will probably be thought sufficient if I confine myself to such illustrations as will bring the tendency of the age most clearly before the reader; and for this purpose, I will notice the works of two historians I have not yet mentioned; one of whom was celebrated as an antiquary, the other as a theologian. Both possessed considerable learning, and one was a man of undoubted genius; their works are, therefore, worth attention, as symptoms of the state of the French intellect late in the seventeenth century. The name of the antiquary was Audigier; the name of the theologian was Bossuet: and from them we may learn something respecting the way in which, during the reign of Louis XIV., it was usual to contemplate the transactions of past ages.

The celebrated work of Audigier, on the Origin of the French, was published at Paris in 1676.43 It would be unjust to deny that the author was a man of great and careful reading. But his credulity, his prejudices, his reverence for antiquity, and his dutiful admiration for every thing established by the church and the court, warped his judgment to an extent which, in our time, seems incredible; and, as there are probably few persons in England who have read his once famous book, I will give an outline of its leading views.

43 During many years it enjoyed great reputation; and there is no history written In that period respecting which Le Long gives so many details. See his Bibliothèque Historique de la France, vol. ii. pp. 13, 14. Compare La Bibliothèque de Leber, vol. ii. p. 110, Paris, 1839.