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Title: Of History and Romance Author: William Godwin Date: 1797 Language: en Topics: history, love Source: Retrieved on 25th September 2020 from http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/godwin.history.html Notes: Godwin wrote this piece, according to a note in the manuscript, “while the Enquirer [1797] was in the press, under the impression that the favour of the public might have demanded another volume.”
The study of history may well be ranked among those pursuits which are
most worthy to be chosen by a rational being.
The study of history divides itself into two principal branches; the
study of mankind in a mass, of the progress the fluctuations, the
interests and the vices of society; and the study of the individual.
The history of a nation might be written in the first of these senses,
entirely in terms of abstraction, and without descending so much as to
name one of those individuals to which the nation is composed.
It is curious, and it is important, to trace the progress of mankind
from the savage to the civilised state; to observe the points of
similitude between the savages of America and the savages of ancient
Italy or Greece; to investigate the rise of property moveable to
immoveable; and thus to ascertain the causes that operate universally
upon masses of men under given circumstances, without being turned aside
in their operation by the varying character of individuals.
The fundamental article in this branch of historical investigation, is
the progress and varieties of civilisation. But there are many
subordinate channels into which it has formed itself. We may study the
history of eloquence or the history of philosophy. We may apply
ourselves to the consideration and the arts of life, and the arts of
refinement and pleasure. There lie before us the history of wealth and
the history of commerce. We may study the progress of revenue and the
arts of taxation. We may follow the varieties of climates, and trace
their effects on the human body and the human mind. Nay, we may descend
still lower; we may have our attention engrossed by the succession of
archons [1] and the adjustment of olympiads [2]; or may apply ourselves
entirely to the examination of medals and coins.
There are those who conceive that history, in one or all the kinds here
enumerated, is the only species of history deserving a serious
attention. They disdain the records of individuals. To interest our
passions, or employ our thoughts about personal events, be they of
patriots, of authors, of heroes or kinds, they regard as a symptom of
effeminacy. Their mighty minds cannot descend to be busied about
anything less than the condition of nations, and the collation and
comparison of successive ages. Whatever would disturb by exciting our
feelings the torpid tranquility of the soul, they have in unspeakable
abhorrence.
It is to be feared that one of the causes that have dictated the
panegyric which has so often been pronounced upon this series of
history, is its dry and repulsive nature. Men who by persevering
exertions have conquered this subject in defiance of innumerable
obstacles, will almost always be able to ascribe to it a
disproportionate value. Men who have not done this, often imagine they
shall acquire at a cheap rate among the ignorant the reputation of
profound, by praising, in the style of an adept, that which few men
venture so much as to approach. Difficulty has a tendency to magnify to
almost all eyes the excellence of that which only through difficulty can
be attained.
The mind of man does not love abstractions. Its genuine and native
taste, as it discovers itself in children and uneducated persons, rests
entirely in individualities. It is only by perseverance and custom that
we are brought to have a relish for philosophy, mathematical, natural or
moral. There was a time when the man, now most eagerly attached to them,
shrunk with terror from their thorny path.
But the abstractions of philosophy, when we are grown familiar with
them, often present to our minds a simplicity and precision, that may
well supply the place of entire individuality. The abstractions of
history are more cumbrous and unwieldy. In their own nature perhaps they
are capable of simplicity. But this species is yet in its infancy. He
who would study the history of nations abstracted from individuals whose
passions and peculiarities are interesting to our minds, will find it a
dry and frigid science. It will supply him with no clear ideas. The
mass, as fast as he endeavours to cement and unite it, crumbles from his
grasp, like a lump of sand. Those who study revenue or almost any other
of the complex subjects above enumerated are ordinarily found, with
immense pains to have compiled a species of knowledge which is no sooner
accumulated than it perishes, and rather to have confounded themselves
with a labyrinth of particulars, than to have risen to the dignity of
principles.
Let us proceed to the consideration of the second great branch of the
study of society. In doing so we shall be insensibly led to assign to
the first branch its proper rank.
The study of individual men can never fail to be an object of the
highest importance. It is only by comparison that we come to know any
thing of mind or ourselves. We go forth into the world; we see what man
is; we enquire what he was; and when we return home to engage in the
solemn act of self-investigation, our most useful employment is to
produce the materials we have collected abroad, and, by a sort of
magnetism, cause those particulars to start our to view in ourselves,
which might otherwise have laid for ever undetected.
But the study of individual history has a higher use than merely as it
conduces to the elucidation of science. It is the most fruitful source
of activity and motive. If a man were condemned to perfect solitude, he
would probably sink into the deepest and most invariable lethargy of
soul. If he only associate, as most individuals are destined to do, with
ordinary men, he will be in danger of becoming such as they are. It is
the contemplation of illustrious men, such as we find scattered through
the long succession of ages, that kindles into flame the hidden fire
within us. The excellence indeed of sages, of patriots and poets, as we
find it exhibited at the end of their maturity, is too apt to overwhelm
and discourage us with its lustre. But history takes away the cause of
our depression. It enables us to view minutely and in detail what to the
uninstructed eye was too powerful to be gazed at; and, by tracing the
progress of the virtuous and the wise from its first dawn to its
meridian lustre, shows us that they were composed of materials merely
human. It was the sight of the trophies of Mithrades [3], that recurred
to break the infant slumbers of his more illustrious successor. While we
admire the poet and the hero, and sympathize with his generous ambition
or his ardent expressions, we insensibly imbibe the same spirit, and
burn with kindred fires.
But let us suppose that the genuine purpose of history, was to enable us
to understand the machine of society, and to direct it to its best
purposes. Even here individual history will perhaps be found in point of
importance to take the lead of general. General history will furnish us
with precedents in abundance, will show us how that which happened in
one country has been repeated in another, and may perhaps even instruct
us how that which has occurred in the annals of mankind, may under
similar circumstances be produced again. But, if the energy of our minds
should lead us to aspire to something more animated and noble than dull
repetition, if we love the happiness of mankind enough to feel ourselves
impelled to explore new and untrodden paths, we must then not rest
contented with considering society in a mass, but must analyze the
materials from which it is composed. It will be necessary for us to
scrutinize the nature of man, before we can pronounce what it is of
which social man is capable. Laying aside the generalities of historical
abstraction, we must mark the operation of human passions; must observe
the empire of motives whether grovelling or elevated; and must note the
influence that one human being exercises over another, and the
ascendancy of the daring and the wise over the vulgar multitude. It is
thus, and thus only, that we shall be enabled to add, to the knowledge
of the past, a sagacity that can penetrate into the depths of futurity.
We shall not only understand those events as they arise which are no
better than old incidents under new names, but shall judge truly of such
conjunctures and combinations, their sources and effects, as, thought
they have never yet occurred, are within the capacities of our nature.
He that would prove the liberal and spirited benefactor of his species,
must connect the two branches of history together, and regard the
knowledge of the individual, as that which can alone give energy and
utility to the records of our social existence.
From these considerations one inference may be deduced, which
constitutes perhaps the most important rule that can be laid down
respecting the study of history. This is, the wisdom of studying the
detail, and not in abridgement. The prolixity of dullness is indeed
contemptible. To read a history which, expanding itself through several
volumes, treats only of a short period, is true economy. To read
historical abridgements, in which each point of the subject is touched
upon only, and immediately dismissed, is a wanton prodigality of time
worthy only of folly or of madness.
The figures which present themselves in such a history, are like the
groups that we sometimes see placed in the distance of a landscape, that
are just sufficiently marked to distinguish the man from the brute, or
the male from the female, but are totally unsusceptible of
discrimination of form or expression of sentiment. The men I would study
upon the canvas of history, are men worth the becoming intimately
acquainted with.
It is in history, as it is in life. Superficial acquaintance is nothing.
A scene incessantly floating, cannot instruct us; it can scarcely become
a source of amusement to a cultivated mind. I would stop the flying
figures, that I may mark them more clearly. There must be an exchange of
real sentiments, or an investigation of subtle peculiarities, before
improvement can be the result. There is a magnetical virtue in man, but
there must be friction and heat, before the virtue will operate.
Pretenders indeed to universal science, who examine nothing, but imagine
they understand everything, are ready from the slightest glance to
decipher the whole character. Not so the genuine scholar. His curiosity
is never satiated. He is ever upon the watch for further and still
further particulars. Trembling for his own fallibility and frailty, he
employs every precaution to guard himself against them.
There are characters in history that may almost be said to be worth an
eternal study. They are epitomes of the [?] of its best and most exalted
features, purified from their grossness. I am not contented to observe
such a man upon the public stage, I would follow him into his closet.[4]
I would see the friend and the father of a family, as well as the
patriot. I would read his works and his letters, if any remain to us. I
would observe the turn of his thoughts and the character of his
phraseology. I would study his public orations. I would collate his
behaviour in prosperity with his behaviour in adversity. I should be
glad to know the course of his studies, and the arrangement of his time.
I should rejoice to have, or to be enabled to make, if that were
possible, a journal of his ordinary and minutest actions. I believe I
should be better employed in studying one man, than in perusing the
abridgement of Universal History in sixty volumes. I would rather be
acquainted with a few trivial particulars of the actions and disposition
of Virgil and Horace, than with the lives of many men, and the history
of many nations.
This leads us to a second rule respecting the study of history. Those
historians alone are worthy of attention and persevering study that
treat the development of great genius, or the exhibition of bold and
masculine virtues. Modern history indeed we ought to peruse, because all
they we wish must be connected with all that we are, and because it is
incumbent upon us to explore the means by which the latter may be made,
as it were, to slide into the former. But modern history, for the most
part, is not to be perused for its own sake.
The ancients were giants, but we, their degenerate successors, are
pygmies. There was something in the nature of the Greek and Roman
republics that expanded and fired the soul. He that sees not this, if he
have had an adequate opportunity to see it, must be destitute of some of
the first principles of discrimination. He that feels not the
comparative magnitude of their views, must be himself the partaker of a
slow-working and unelevated soul.
To convince us of this, we need do no more than look into the
biographical collection of Plutarch.[5] Plutarch is neither lucid in his
arrangement, eloquent in his manner, nor powerful in his conceptions.
The effect he produces upon us, is the effect of his subject, and is
scarcely in any respect aided by the skill of the writer.
From Plutarch let us turn to the collections in English, French and
Italian, relative to the persons who in modern times have reflected most
honour upon any of these nations. We sometimes no doubt admire,
occasionally we sympathise. But the greatest personages there upon
record, appear in the comparison encumbered with their rank. Their march
is slow, weighed down as they are on every side with prejudices and
precedents. They are disciplines to dull monotony. They are cast
together in one characteristic mould. There is something in the nature
of modern governments and institutions that seems to blight in the bud
every grander and more ample development of the soul. When we attempt to
display the agility or the grace, the capacity for which inheres in our
nature, we resemble a vaulter or figurante that should undertake to
dance in fetters.
The ancients on the other hand are men of a free and undaunted spirit.
There is a conscious dignity in their mien that impresses us with awe.
Whatever they undertake they undertake with a full and undivided soul.
They proceed to their object with an unerring aim, and do not lose
themselves in dark, inexplicable windings. He that shall study their
history with an unbiassed spirit, will almost imagine that he is reading
of a different species. He will not be blind to their mistakes, their
abuses and their crimes, but he will confess that their minds are of a
more decisive character, and their virtues more attractive and sublime.
We are sometimes told that the remoteness of the object in this case
misleads us, and that we admire the ancients for this reason merely,
because they are ancients. But this solution will not account for the
phenomenon. Read on the one hand Thucydides and Livy,[6] and on the
other Hume and Voltaire and Robertson.[7] When we admire the personages
of the former, we simply enter into the feelings with which these
authors recorded them. The latter neither experience such emotions nor
excite them. The ancients were not ancients to their contemporaries,
pourtant appris a les admires. Assurement si la posterite jamais admire
les notres, elle ne l’ausa pas appris de nous.
Rousseau: Nouvelle Heloise, Lettre XII
[The ancients were contemporary with their historians, but they have
taught us to admire them. Assuredly, if posterity should admire our own
men, it will do so not because of us]
No: the difference is intrinsic, and the emotions will be generated as
long as history endures.
What sort of an object is the history of England? Till the extinction of
the wars of York and Lancaster, it is one scene of barbarism and
cruelty. Superstition rides triumphant upon the subject neck of princes
and of people, intestine war of noble with noble, or of one pretender to
the crown against another, is almost incessant. The gallant champion is
no sooner ousted, than he is led without form to the scaffold, or
massacred in cold blood upon the field. In all these mighty struggles,
scarcely a trace is to be found of a sense of the rights of men. They
are combinations among the oppressors against him that would usurp their
tyranny, or they are the result of an infatuated predilection for one
despotic monster in preference to another. The period of the Tudors is a
period of base and universal slavery. The reign of Elizabeth is
splendid, but its far-famed worthies are in reality supple and servile
courtiers, treacherous, undermining and unprincipled. The period of the
Stuarts is the only portion of our history interesting to the heart of
man. Yet its noblest virtues are obscured by the vile jargon of
fanaticism and hypocrisy. From the moment that the grant contest excited
under the Stuarts was quieted by the Revolution,[8] our history assumes
its most insipid and insufferable form. It is the history of
negotiations and tricks, it is the history of revenues and debts, it is
the history of corruption and political profligacy, but it is not the
history of genuine independent man.
Some persons, endowed with too much discernment and taste not to
perceive the extreme disparity that subsists between the character of
ancient and modern times, have observed that ancient history carries no
other impression to their minds than that of exaggeration and fable.
It is not necessary here to enter into a detail of the evidence upon
which our belief of ancient history is founded. Let us take it for
granted that it is a fable. Are all fables unworthy of regard? Ancient
history, says Rousseau, is a tissue of such fables, as have a moral
perfectly adapted to the human heart. I ask not, as a principal point,
whether it be true or false? My first enquiry is, “Can I derive
instruction from it? Is it a genuine praxis upon the nature of man? Is
it pregnant with the most generous motives and examples? If so, I had
rather be profoundly versed in this fable, than in all the genuine
histories that ever existed.”
It must be admitted indeed that all history bears too near a resemblance
to fable. Nothing is more uncertain, more contradictory, more
unsatisfactory than the evidence of facts. If this be the case in courts
of justice, where truth is sometimes sifted with tenacious perseverance,
how much more will it hold true of the historian? He can administer no
oath, he cannot issue his precept, and summon his witnesses from distant
provinces, he cannot arraign his personages and compel them to put in
their answer. He must take what they choose to tell, the broken
fragments, and the scattered ruins of evidence.
That history which comes nearest to truth, is the mere chronicle of
facts, places and dates. But this is in reality no history. He that
knows only what day the Bastille was taken and on what spot Louis XVI
perished, knows nothing. He professes the mere skeleton of history. The
muscles, the articulations, every thing in which the life emphatically
resides, is absent.
Read Sallust.[9] To every action he assigns a motive. Rarely an
uncertainty diversifies his page. He describes his characters with
preciseness and decision. He seems to enter into the hearts of his
personages, and unfolds their secret thought. Considered as fable,
nothing can be more perfect. But neither is this history.
There is but one further mode of writing history, and this is the mode
principally prevalent in modern times. In this mode, the narrative is
sunk in the critic. The main body of the composition consists of a
logical deduction and calculation of probabilities. This species of
writing may be of use as a whetstone upon which to sharpen our faculty
of discrimination, but it answers none of the legitimate purposes of
history.
From these considerations it follows that the noblest and most excellent
species of history, may be decided to be a composition in which, with a
scanty substratum of facts and dates, the writer interweaves a number of
happy, ingenious and instructive inventions, blending them into one
continuous and indiscernible mass. It sufficiently corresponds with the
denomination, under which Abbe Prevost [10] acquired considerable
applause, of historical romance. Abbe Prevost differs from Sallust,
inasmuch as he made freer use of what may be styled, the licentia
historica.
If then history be little better than romance under a graver name, it
may not be foreign to the subject here treated, to enquire into the
credit due to that species of literature, which bears the express stamp
of invention, and calls itself romance or novel.
This sort of writing has been exposed to more obloquy and censure than
any other.
The principal cause of this obloquy is sufficiently humorous and
singular.
Novels, as an object of trade among booksellers, are of a peculiar cast.
There are few by which immense sums of money can be expected to be
gained. There is scarcely one by which some money is not gained. A class
of readers, consisting of women and boys, and which is considerably
numerous, requires a continual supply of books of this sort. The
circulating libraries therefore must be furnished; while, in consequence
of the discredit which has fallen upon romance, such works are rarely
found to obtain a place in the collection of the gentleman or the
scholar. An ingenious bookseller of the metropolis, speculating upon
this circumstance, was accustomed to paste an advertisement in his
window, to attract the eye of the curious passenger, and to fire his
ambition, by informing him of a “want of novels for the ensuing season”.
The critic and the moralist, in their estimate of romances, have
borrowed the principle that regulates the speculations of trade. They
have weighed novels by the great and taken into their view the whole
scum and surcharge of the press. But surely this is not the way in which
literature would teach us to consider the subject.
When we speak of poetry, we do not fear to commend this species of
composition, regardless of the miserable trash that from month to month
finds its way from the press under the appellation of poetry. The like
may be said of history, or of books of philosophy, natural and
intellectual. There is no species of literature that would stand this
ordeal.
If I would estimate truly any head of composition, nothing can be more
unreasonable, than for me to take into account every pretender to
literature that has started in it. In poetry I do not consider those
persons who merely know how to count their syllables and tag a rhyme;
still less those who print their effusion in the form of verse without
being adequate to either of these. I recollect those authors only who
are endowed with some of the essentials of poetry, with its imagery, its
enthusiasm, or its empire over the soul of man. Just so in the cause
before us, I should consider only those persons who had really written
romance, not those who had vainly attempted it.
Romance, then, strictly considered, may be pronounced to be one of the
species of history. The difference between romance and what ordinarily
bears the denomination history, is this. The historian is confined to
individual incident and individual man, and must hang upon that his
invention or conjecture as he can. The writer collects his materials
from all sources, experience, report, and the records of human affairs;
then generalises them; and finally selects, from their elements and the
various combinations they afford, those instances which he is best
qualified to portray, and which he judges most calculated to impress the
hear and improve the faculties of his reader. In this point of view we
should be apt to pronounce that romance was a bolder species of
composition than history.
It has been affirmed by the critics that the species of composition
which Abbe Prevost and others have attempted, and according to which,
upon a slight substratum of fact, all the license of romantic invention
is to be engrafted, is contrary to the principles of a just taste.
History is by this means debauched and corrupted. Real characters are
wantonly misrepresented. The reader, who has been interested by a
romance of this sort, scarcely knows how to dismiss it from his mind
when he comes to consider the genuine annals of the period of which it
relates. The reality and the fiction, like two substances of disagreeing
natures, will never adequately blend with each other. The invention of
the writer is much too wanton not to discolour and confound the facts
with which he is concerned; while on the other hand, his imagination is
fettered and checked at every turn by facts that will not wholly
accommodate themselves to the colour of his piece, or the moral he would
adduce from it.”
These observations, which have been directed against the production of
historical romance, will be found not wholly inapplicable to those which
assume the graver and more authentic name of history. The reader will be
miserably deluded if, while he reads history, he suffers himself to
imagine that he is reading facts. Profound scholars are so well aware of
this, that, when they would study the history of any country, they pass
over the historians that have adorned and decorated the facts, and
proceed at once to the naked and scattered materials, out of which the
historian constructed his work. This they do, that they may investigate
the story for themselves; or, more accurately speaking, that each man,
instead of resting in the inventions of another, may invest his history
for himself, and possess his creed as he possesses his property, single
and incommunicable.
Philosophers, we are told, have been accustomed by old prescription to
blunder in the dark; but there is perhaps no darkness, if we consider
the case maturely, so complete as that of the historian. It is a trite
observation, to say that the true history of a public transaction is
never known till many years after the event. The places, the dates,
those things which immediately meet the eye of the spectator, are indeed
as well known as they are ever likely to be. But the comments of the
actors come out afterwards; to what are we the wiser? Whitlock and
Clarendon,[11] who lived upon the spot, differ as much in their view of
the transactions, as Hume and the whig historians have since done. Yet
all are probably honest. If you be a superficial thinker, you will take
up with one or another of their representations, as best suits your
prejudices. But, if you are a profound one, you will see so many
incongruities and absurdities in all, as deeply to impress you with the
scepticism of history.
The man of taste and discrimination, who has properly weighed these
causes, will be apt to exclaim, “Dismiss me from the falsehood and
impossibility of history, and deliver me over to the reality of
romance.”
The conjectures of the historian must be built upon a knowledge of the
characters of his personages. But we never know any man’s character. My
most intimate and sagacious friend continually misapprehends my motives.
He is in most cases a little worse judge of them than myself and I am
perpetually mistaken. The materials are abundant for the history of
Alexander, Caesar, Cicero and Queen Elizabeth. Yet how widely do the
best informed persons differ respecting them? Perhaps by all their
character is misrepresented. The conjectures therefore respecting their
motives in each particular transaction must be eternally fallacious. The
writer of romance stands in this respect upon higher ground. He must be
permitted, we should naturally suppose, to understand the character
which is the creature of his own fancy.
The writer of romance is to be considered as the writer of real history;
while he who was formerly called the historian, must be contented to
step down into the place of his rival, with this disadvantage, that he
is a romance writer, without the arduous, the enthusiastic and the
sublime licence of imagination, that belong to that species of
composition. True history consists in a delineation of consistent, human
character, in a display of the manner in which such a character acts
under successive circumstances, in showing how character increases and
assimilates new substances to its own, and how it decays, together with
the catastrophe into which by its own gravity it naturally declines.
There is however, after all, a deduction to be made from this eulogium
of the romance writer. To write romance is a task too great for the
powers of man, and under which he must be expected to totter. No man can
hold the rod so even, but that it will tremble and vary from its course.
To sketch a few bold outlines of character is no desperate undertaking;
but to tell precisely how such a person would act in a given situation,
requires a sagacity scarcely less than divine. We never conceive a
situation, or those minute shades in a character that would modify its
conduct. Naturalists tell us that a single grain of sand more or less on
the surface of the earth, would have altered its motion, and, in the
process of ages, have diversified its events. We have no reason to
suppose in this respect, that what is true in matter, it false in
morals.
Here then the historian in some degree, though imperfectly, seems to
recover his advantage upon the writer of romance. He indeed does not
understand the character he exhibits, but the events are taken out of
his hands and determined by the system of the universe, and therefore,
as far as his information extends, must be true. The romance writer, on
the other hand, is continually straining at a foresight to which his
faculties are incompetent, and continually fails. This is ludicrously
illustrated in those few romances which attempt to exhibit the
fictitious history of nations. That principle only which holds the
planets in their course, is competent to produce that majestic series of
events which characterises flux, and successive multitudes.
The result of the whole, is that the sciences and the arts of man are
alike imperfect, and almost infantine. He that will not examine the
collections and the efforts of man, till absurdity and folly are
extirpated among them, must be contented to remain in ignorance, and
wait for the state, where he expects that faith will give place to
sight, and conjecture be swallowed up in knowledge.
[1] Archon: The Gnostic religion held that the cosmos were created by a
hierarchy of archons, or angelic powers subordinate to the Deity. The
archons were also the nine chief magistrates of ancient Athens.
[2] Olympiad: The period of four years measured between one Olympic
Games and the next, by which the ancient Greeks computed time, taking
776 BC as the first year of the first olympiad. (OED)
[3] Mithrades V, murdered in 123 BC and succeeded by his eleven-year-old
son Mithrades VI, later known as Mithrades “the Great” for his military
conquests.
[4] Joanna Baillie makes a very similar statement in the “Introductory
Discourse” of her Series of Plays...on the Passions (1798): ““Let us
understand, from observation or report, that any person harbours in his
breast, concealed from the world’s eye, some powerful rankling passion
of what kind soever it may be, we will observe every word, every motion,
every look, even the distant gait of such a man, with a constancy and
attention bestowed upon no other. Nay, should we meet him unexpectedly
on our way, a feeling will pass across our minds as though we found
ourselves in the neighborhood of some secret and fearful thing. If
invisible, would we not follow him into his lonely haunts, into his
closet, into the midnight silence of his chamber?” (11)
[5] Plutarch (46–120 AD): Biographer and philosopher, most famously
author of Parallel Lives.
[6] Thucydides (460–395 BC): Greek historian, most famously author of
History of the Peloponnesian War. Livy (59 BC — AD 17): Roman historian
noted for his history of Rome.
[7] David Hume (1711–76): Scottish philosopher and historian, noted for
A Treatise on Human Nature and his History of England, as well as other
books and essays. Voltaire (1694–1778): French philosopher of the
Enlightenment, author of Lettres Philosophiques and Candide. William
Robertson: Scottish historian, friend of Hume, Adam Smith, and prominent
member of Edinburgh group of thinkers usually gathered under the term
“the Scottish Enlightenment.”
[8] The so-called “Glorious” or “Bloodless” Revolution of 1688, which
set up a balance of power between the Crown and Parliament, effectively
setting up an oligarchy.
[9] Sallust (86–34 BC): Roman historian and statesman, author of
histories of the Catiline conspiracy and the Jugurtha War.
[10] Abbe Prevost (1697–1763): French novelist most famous for writing
historical romances.
[11] Bulstrode Whitelocke (1605–75): author of Memorials of the English
Affairs from the Beginning of the Reign of Charles I to the Happy
Restoration of Charles II (1682). Clarendon (Edward Hyde, 1609–74):
1^(st) Earl of Clarendon, chief advisor to Charles II and author of True
Historical Narrative of the Rebellion and Civil Wars of England
(1702–4).