_17th-century History._--In historical composition, especially in the department of memoirs, this period was exceedingly rich. At last there was written, in French, an entire history of France. The author was Francois Eudes de Mezeray (1610-1683), whose work, though not exhibiting the perfection of style at which some of his contemporaries had already arrived, and though still more or less uncritical, yet deserves the title of history. The example was followed by a large number of writers, some of extended works, some of histories in part. Mezeray himself is said to have had a considerable share in the _Histoire du roi Henri le grand_ by the archbishop Perefixe (1605-1670); Louis Maimbourg (1610-1686) wrote histories of the Crusades and of the League; Paul Pellisson (1624-1693) gave a history of Louis XIV. and a more valuable _Memoire_ in defence of the superintendent Fouquet. Still later in the century, or at the beginning of the next, the Pere d'Orleans (1644-1698) wrote a history of the revolutions of England, the Pere Daniel (1649-1728), like d'Orleans a Jesuit, composed a lengthy history of France and a shorter one on the French military forces. Finally, at the end of the period, comes the great ecclesiastical history of Claude Fleury (1640-1723), a work which perhaps belongs more to the section of erudition than to that of history proper. Three small treatises, however, composed by different authors towards the middle part of the century, supply remarkable instances of prose style in its application to history. These are the _Conjurations du comte de Fiesque_, written by the famous Cardinal de Retz (1613-1679), the _Conspiration de Walstein_ of Sarrasin, and the _Conjuration des Espagnols contre Venise_, composed in 1672 by the abbe de Saint-Real (1639-1692), the author of various historical and critical works deserving less notice. These three works, whose similarity of subject and successive composition at short intervals leave little doubt that a certain amount of intentional rivalry animated the two later authors, are among the earliest and best examples of the monographs for which French, in point of grace of style and lucidity of exposition, has long been the most successful vehicle of expression among European languages. Among other writers of history, as distinguished from memoirs, need only be noticed Agrippa d'Aubigne, whose _Histoire universelle_ closed his long and varied list of works, and Varillas (1624-1696), a historian chiefly remarkable for his extreme untrustworthiness. In point of memoirs and correspondence the period is hardly less fruitful than that which preceded it. The _Registres-Journaux_ of Pierre de l'Etoile (1540-1611) consist of a diary something of the Pepys character, kept for nearly forty years by a person in high official employment. The memoirs of Sully (1560-1641), published under a curious title too long to quote, date also from this time.