Compare _Bouvard et Pécuchet_, by G. Flaubert. Here we have two simpletons who, among other projects, propose to write history. In order to help them, one of their friends sends them (p. 156) "rules of criticism taken from the _Cours_ of Daunou," such as: "It is no proof to appeal to rumour and common opinion; the witnesses cannot appear. Reject impossibilities: Pausanias was shown the stone swallowed by Saturn. Keep in mind the skill of forgers, the interest of apologists and calumniators." Daunou's work contains a number of truisms quite as obvious, and still more comic than the above. [8] Flint (ibid. p. 15) congratulates himself on not having to study the literature of _Historic_, for "a very large portion of it is so trivial and superficial that it can hardly ever have been of use even to persons of the humblest capacity, and may certainly now be safely confined to kindly oblivion." Nevertheless, Flint has given in his book a summary list of the principal works of this kind published in French-speaking countries from the earliest times. A more general and complete account (though still a summary one) of the literature of this subject in all countries is furnished by the _Lehrbuch der historischen Methode_ of E. Bernheim (Leipzig, 1894, 8vo), pp. 143 _sqq._ Flint (who was acquainted with several works unknown to Bernheim) stops at 1893, Bernheim at 1894. Since 1889 the _Jahresberichte der Geschichtswissenschaft_ have contained a periodical account of recent works on historical methodology. [9] This seventh volume was published in 1844. But Daunou's celebrated _Cours_ was delivered at the Collège de France in the years 1819-30. [10] The Italians of the Renaissance (Mylæns, Francesco Patrizzi, and others), and after them the writers of the last two centuries, ask what is the relation of history to dialectic and rhetoric; to how many laws the historical branch of literature is subject; whether it is right for the historian to relate treasons, acts of cowardice, crimes, disorders; whether history is entitled to use any style other than the sublime; and so on. The only books on _Historic_, published before the nineteenth century, which give evidence of any original effort to attack the real difficulties, are those of Lenglet de Fresnoy (_Méthode pour étudier l'histoire_, Paris, 1713), and of J. M. Chladenius (_Allgemeine Geschichtswissenschaft_, Leipzig, 1752). The work of Chladenius has been noticed by Bernheim (ibid. p. 166).