XXXVIII. If the historians of the first rate, and the monuments are suspicious, what shall we say of our ancient chronicles? Why, I fear, we can call them nothing but miserable attested novels filled with fables; and this is the opinion which a celebrated academician expresses of them. After the fierce barbarous nations of the North, spread themselves and their ignorance over all the parts of Europe, the historians degenerated into novelists: then, the relation of incredible and wonderful adventures began to be looked upon as the sublime part of history. Thelesinus, who is said to have lived about the middle of the sixth century, in the reign of king Arthur, and Melchinus, who is not quite so ancient, wrote the history of Great Britain, their own country; and of king Arthur, and his knights of the round table; which, they disfigured with a thousand fables. The same may be said of Hannibald the Frank; who, although he is much more modern, some believe to have been contemporary with Clodovicus, whose history is a rhapsody of lies, coarsly imagined. Such also was the history, of which Gildas, a religious of Wales, was said to be the author; and which relates an infinity of marvellous things; of king Arthur, Perceval, Lancelot, and many others. The judicious criticism which prevails at present, will be careful to transmit to posterity a system of ancient history, amended and illustrated with a great number of useful observations; and also, a more chaste and correct one of our own times. But, notwithstanding all the care and precaution a historian can take, and all the industry he can exert, it is certain, we can’t know the characters of men, and the motives which led to events, but from the memoirs of those who had a principal hand in conducting public business. _Excessive Pyrrhonism in History._ XXXIX. Carlovicus, who had a share in the most material transactions of his time, upon reading the history of Sleidan, and finding the truth of things so disfigured in it, declared, that history inclined him to withhold his assent to all that was related in any other, either ancient or modern. Sir Thomas Brown, an Englishman, the author of a tract, intitled The Religion of a Physician, in which he speaks of history, says, ‘I don’t give more credit to relations of things past, than to predictions of those to come.’ Thus we see men are disposed to run into extremes both of credulity and pyrrhonism.