[827] ‘Il réfute les fables qu'on avançoit sur l'origine des François, appuyées sur le témoignage au faux Bérose. Il dit que leur nom vient de leur ancienne franchise.’ Le Long, Bibliothèque Historique, vol. ii. p. 750.
[828] Compare Sorel, Bibliothèque Françoise, p. 298, with Du Fresnoy, Méthode pour étudier l'Histoire, vol. x. p. 4, Parie, 1772. There is an account of Gomberville in Les Historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux, vol. viii. pp. 15–19; a singularly curious book, which is, for the seventeenth century, what Brantome is for the sixteenth. I ought to have mentioned earlier the inimitable ridicule with which Rabelais treats the habit historians had of tracing the genealogies of their heroes back to Noah. Œuvres de Rabelais, vol. i. pp. 1–3, and vol. ii. pp. 10–17: see also, at vol. v. pp. 171, 172, his defence of the antiquity of Chinon.
[829] ‘L'auteur croit qu'il ne faut pas la chercher ailleurs que dans le pays où ils out été connus des Romains, c'est-à-dire entre l'Elbe et le Rhin,’ Le Long, Bibliothèque Historique, vol. ii. p. 56. This work of Berthault's was, for many years, a text-book in the French colleges. Biog. Univ. vol. iv. p. 347.
[830] The first volume in 1643; the second in 1646; and the last in 1651. Biog. Univ. vol. xxviii. p. 510.
[831] ‘The French have now their first general historian, Mezeray.’ Hallam's Literature of Europe, vol. iii. p. 228; and see Stephen's Lectures on the History of France, 1851, vol. i. p. 10.
[832] Bayle says, that Mezeray is, ‘de tous les historiens celui qui favorise le plus les peuples contre la cour.’ Le Long, Bibliothèque Historique, vol. iii. p. lxxxvi.
[833] Though it did not prevent him from believing that sudden tempests, and unusual appearances in the heavens, were aberrations, due to supernatural interference, and, as such, were the prognosticators of political change. Mézéray, Hist. de France, vol. i. pp. 202, 228, 238, 241, 317, 792, vol. ii. pp. 485, 573, 1120, vol. iii. pp. 31, 167, 894; instructive passages, as proving that, even in powerful minds, the scientific and secular method was still feeble.
[834] What he did on these subjects is most remarkable, considering that some of the best materials were unknown, and in manuscript, and that even De Thou gives scarcely any information respecting them; so that Mezeray had no model. See, among other passages which have struck me in the first volume, pp. 145–147, 204, 353, 356, 362–365, 530, 531, 581, 812, 946, 1039. Compare his indignant expressions at vol. ii. p. 721.
[835] Those who have studied the French memoirs of the seventeenth century, know how little can be found in them respecting the condition of the people; while the fullest private correspondence, such as the letters of Sévigné and De Maintenon, are equally unsatisfactory. The greater part of the evidence now extant has been collected by M. Monteil, in his valuable work, Histoire des divers Etats: but whoever will put all this together must admit, that we are better informed as to the condition of many savage tribes than we are concerning the lower classes of France during the reign of Louis XIV.
[836] 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.