INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF HISTORY

the public, by filling the mind with poetical images of vanished realities. Some endeavoured to preserve the peculiar colouring of the original documents, which they adapted: "Charmed with the contemporary narratives," says Barante, "I have endeavoured to write a consecutive account which should borrow from them their animation and interest." This leads directly to the neglect of criticism, and to the reproduction of whatever is effective from the literary point of view. Others declared that the facts of the past ought to be recounted with all the emotions of a spectator. "Thierry," says Michelet, praising him, "in telling us the story of Klodowig, breathes the spirit and shows the emotion of recently invaded France...." Michelet "stated the problem of history as the resuscitation of integral life in the inmost parts of the organism." With the romantic historians the choice of subject, of plan, of the proofs, of the style, is dominated by an engrossing desire to produce an effect—a literary, not a scientific ambition. Some romantic historians have slid down this inclined plane to the level of the "historical novel." We know the nature of this species of literature, which flourished so vigorously from the Abbé Barthélemy and Chateaubriand down to Mérimée and Ebers, and which some are now vainly attempting to rejuvenate. The object is to "make the scenes of the past live again" in dramatic pictures artistically constructed with "true" colours and details. The obvious object of the method is that it does not provide the reader with any means of distinguishing between the elements borrowed from the documents and the imaginary elements, not to mention the fact that generally the documents used are not all of the same origin, so that while the