I have very little knowledge of the historians of the Renaissance or of those prior to the French Revolution. Apart from the chroniclers of individual exploits, such as LÓpez de Ayala, BrantÔme, and the others, they are wholly colourless, and either pseudo-Roman or pseudo-Greek. Even Machiavelli has a personal, Italian side, which is mocking and incisive—and this is all that is worth while in him—and he has a pretentious pseudo-Roman side, which is unspeakably tiresome.

Generally considered, the more carefully composed and smoothly varnished the history, the duller it will be found; while the more personal revelations it contains, the more engaging. Most readers today, for example, prefer Bernal DÍaz del Castillo's True History of the Conquest of New Spain to Solis's History of the Conquest of Mexico. One is the book of a soldier, who had a share in the deeds described, and who reveals himself for what he is, with all his prejudices, vanities and arrogance; the other is a scholar's attempt to imitate a classic history and to maintain a monotonous music throughout his paragraphs.

Practically all the historians who have followed the French Revolution have individual character, and some have too much of it, as has Carlyle. They distort their subject until it becomes a pure matter of fantasy, or mere literature, or sinks even to the level of a family discussion.

Macaulay's moral pedantry, Thiers's cold and repulsive cretinism, the melodramatic, gesticulatory effusiveness of Michelet are all typical styles.

Historical bazaars À la Cesare CantÙ may be put on one side, as belonging to an inferior genre. They remind me of those great nineteenth century world's fairs, vast, miscellaneous and exhausting.

As for the German historians, they are not translated, so I do not know them. I have read only a few essays of Simmel, which I think extremely keen, and Stewart Chamberlain's book upon the foundations of the nineteenth century, which, if the word France were to be substituted for the word Germany, might easily have been the production of an advanced nationalist of the Action FranÇaise.