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confidence consult those ancient annals, whose authority is too weak to ascertain events. It is needless to observe, that great light may be thrown on the character and sentiments of a nation, by those very books, whence we can learn nothing exact or connected of their history. The most credulous writer, he that has the greatest passion for the marvelous, while he falsifies the history of his contemporaries, paints their manners of life and modes of thinking, without perceiving it. His simplicity, his ignorance, are at once pledges of the artless truth of his drawing, and a warning to distrust that of his relations[1]. This is doubtless the best, if not the only use, we can make of those old reliques of poetry, which have escaped the shipwreck of time. The authors of those fragments, erected into historians by succeeding ages, have caused ancient history to degenerate into a meer tissue of fables. To avoid this mistake, let us
- ↑ This is the opinion of the learned Bartholin, who hath written with so much erudition and judgment, upon certain points of the antiquities of Denmark. Ad ritus, fays he, moresque antiquos eruendos, eos quoque evolvi posse codices existimaverim, quos fabulosis interspersos narrationibus, in historia concinnanda haud tuto sequaris. Vid. Thom. Barthol. de Caus. &c. præfat.
