XXXIX. Upon what other principle than the foregoing, can we account for authors relating many things as the events of very remote ages, without ever having read them in any antient author, or found any traces of them in an antient monument? or for their having, to events which they found related at large, in order to make the account more entertaining, added a variety of circumstances of their own invention? I therefore say, whenever the fiction appears grateful to the reader, and he cannot assign any other motive for the author’s inserting it, he may reasonably conclude, it was done with no other view, than that of making his history more pleasing to those who read it; and how much of this, do we meet with in numbers of authors! XL. The account of the great battle, in which Charles Martel and the Duke of Acquitain routed the numerous army of Saracens, that, under the command of Abdarramen, had made an irruption into France, we find related in a very concise and summary way by the authors of that day, and the times which immediately followed it. Notwithstanding this, some modern authors give so prolix and circumstantial a relation of it, that it seems as if they themselves had been present at, and personally engaged in it. This is an observation of Cordemoi’s, whose words I shall insert here, because they are very remarkable. He says, _the particulars of this battle were worthy of being recorded, and the antient authors are exceedingly reprehensible for not having given a circumstantial account of so memorable an action; but in the eyes of all those who are lovers of truth, some modern authors also, whose merit in other respects is great, are inexcusable, for having given relations of this event, which are so minute and circumstantial, that one might be led to think they had assisted at all the councils of war preceding it, and had seen all the motions of the two armies; for they not only describe how the French and Saracens were armed, but how they disposed and arranged their troops; give us the harangues of the chiefs on each side; tell us the stratagems which Abdarramen made use of, and the measures Charles Martel took to frustrate them; and finally, they proceed to describe the particular positions in which the dead bodies lay on the field, the groans and lamentations of the dying, together with all the circumstances of the congratulations which passed between the French chiefs after the battle_. The moderns which Cordemoi censures in this place, are Paulus Emilius, and Fauchet, for he points them out in the margin.