The encomiums of his countrymen proceed from false taste; a taste for superfluous ornament. Men are disposed to lessen the trouble of reading, and to spare the labor of examining into the causes and consequences of events. They choose to please their eyes and ears, rather than feed the mind. Hence the rage for abridgements, and a display of rhetorical embellishments. Hence the eclat with which "Millot's Elements of General History," is received in the world. This work is no more than an Index to General History; or a recapitulation of the principal events. It is calculated for two classes of people; for those who, having read history in the original writers, want to revise their studies, without a repetition of their first labors; and for those who have but little time to employ in reading, and expect only a general and superficial knowlege of history.[178] But a man who would know the minute springs of action; the remote and collateral, as well as the direct causes and consequences of events; and the nice shades of character which distinguish eminent men, with a view to draw rules from living examples; such a man must pass by abridgements as trash; he must have recourse to the original writers, or to collections of authentic papers. Indeed a collection of all the material official papers, arranged in the order of time, however dry and unentertaining to most readers, is really the best, and the only authentic history of a country. The philosopher and statesman, who wish to substitute fact for opinion, will generally suspect human testimony; but repose full confidence in the evidence of papers, which have been the original instruments of public transactions, and recorded by public authority.
These strictures are contrary to the opinions of most men, especially as they regard the stile of the authors mentioned. Yet they are written with a full conviction of their being well founded. They proceed from an earnest desire of arresting the progress of false taste in writing, and of seeing my countrymen called back to nature and truth.
POSTSCRIPT.
The foregoing remarks were written before I had seen the opinions of that judicious and elegant writer, East Apthorp, M. A. vicar of Croydon, on the same history. The following passage is too directly in point to be omitted. It is in his "Second Letter on the Study of History."
"I was disappointed in my expectations of instruction from this book (Gibbon's History) when I discerned that the author had adopted that entertaining but superficial manner of writing history, which was first introduced by the Abbe de Vertot, whose History of the Revolutions in the Government of the Roman Republic, is one of those agreeable and seducing models which never fail of producing a multitude of imitations. There is, in this way of writing, merit enough to recommend it to such readers, and such writers, as propose to themselves no higher aim, than an elegant literary amusement: It piques their curiosity, while it gratifies their indolence. The historian has the advantage, in this way, of passing over such events and institutions as, however essential to the science of history, are less adapted to shine in the recital. By suppressing facts and violating chronology; by selecting the most pleasing incidents and placing them in a striking point of view, by the coloring and drapery of stile and composition, the imagination is gratified with a gaudy spectacle of triumphs and revolutions passing in review before it; while the rapid succession of great events affords a transient delight, without leaving useful and lasting impressions either on the memory or judgement; or fixing those principles which ought to be the result of historic information.
"Nor is it the worst consequence of this slight and modish way of compiling history, that it affords to supine and unreflecting readers a barren entertainment, to fill up the vacant hours of indolence and dissipation. The historian who gives himself the privilege of mutilating and selecting, and arranging at discretion the records of past ages, has full scope to obtrude on his careless readers any system that suits with his preconceived opinions or particular views in writing."—"The only legitimate study of history is in original historians."
The same writer complains of a decline of literature in Great Britain, fixing the "settlement that followed the revolution," as the era of true science and greatness. He remarks that the "aim of modern writers seems to be to furnish their readers with fugitive amusement, and that ancient literature is become rather the ornament of our libraries, than the accomplishment of our minds; being supplanted by the modish productions which are daily read and forgotten."
For proof of what I have advanced respecting the sound of c in Rome, I would observe, that the genitive case of the first declension in Latin anciently ended in ai, which was probably copied from the Greeks; for it is very evident the Latin æ in later writers, was the true representative of the Greek ai. Thus Mousai in Greek was translated into the Roman tongue, musæ. Now c before ai had the sound of k; for where the Romans wrote cæ the Greeks wrote kai. Thus musica, musicæ in the first declension must have been pronounced musika, musikai, not musisee, as we now pronounce the æ.