INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF HISTORY

[25] See C. V. Langlois, H. H. Bancroft et Cie., in the Revue universitaire, 1894, i. p. 233.
[26] The earlier scholars were conscious of the unfavourable character of the conditions under which they worked. They suffered keenly from the insufficiency of the instruments of research and the means of comparison. Most of them made great efforts to obtain information. Hence these voluminous correspondences between scholars of the last few centuries, of which our libraries preserve so many precious fragments, and these accounts of scientific searches, of journeys undertaken for the discovery of historical documents, which, under the name of Iter (Iter Italicum, Iter Germanicum, &c.), were formerly fashionable.
[27] We may remark, in passing, a delusion which is childish enough but very natural, and very common among collectors: they all tend to exaggerate the intrinsic value of the documents they possess, simply because they themselves are the possessors. Documents have been published with a sumptuous array of commentaries by persons who had accidentally acquired them, and who would, quite rightly, have attached no importance to them if they had met with them in public collections. This is, we may add, merely a manifestation, in a somewhat crude form, of a general tendency against which it is always necessary to guard: a man readily exaggerates the importance of the documents he possesses, the documents he has discovered, the texts he has edited, the persons and the questions he has studied.

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