This is true of the First Part
of his great work. In the Second there was no longer room for such
discussion. But he has supplied the place by garrulous reminiscences,
personal anecdotes, incidental adventures, and a host of trivial details,--
trivial in the eyes of the pedant,--which historians have been too willing
to discard, as below the dignity of history. We have the actors in this
great drama in their private dress, become acquainted with their personal
habits, listen to their familiar sayings, and, in short gather up those
minutiae which in the aggregate make up so much of life and not less of
character.
It is this confusion of the great and the little, thus artlessly blended
together, that constitutes one of the charms of the old romantic
chronicle,--not the less true that, in this respect, it approaches nearer to
the usual tone of romance. It is in such writings that we may look to find
the form and pressure of the age. The wormeaten state-papers, official
correspondence, public records, are all serviceable, indispensable, to
history. They are the framework on which it is to repose; the skeleton of
facts which gives it its strength and proportions. But they are as
worthless as the dry bones of the skeleton, unless clothed with the
beautiful form and garb of humanity, and instinct with the spirit of the
age.
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