educated at the College
Louis-le-Grand, and served in the army till he was nearly thirty years
old. He then went to St. Petersburg as secretary to the ambassador
Breteuil, whom he also accompanied to Sweden. He returned to Paris and
began to write the history of the singular proceedings which during his
stay in the Russian capital had placed Catherine II. on the throne. The
Empress, it is said, tried both to bribe and to frighten him, but could
obtain nothing but a promise not to print the sketch till her death. He
continued to live in Paris, where he was distinguished for rather
ill-natured wit and for polished verse-tales and epigrams. For some
reason he devoted himself to the history of Poland. In 1787 he was
elected to the Academy. Then he wrote some _Eclaircissements Historiques
sur les Causes de la Revocation de l'Edit de Nantes_, and is said to
have begun other historical works. He died in 1791. His 'Anecdotes on
the Revolution in Russia' did not appear till 1797; his _Histoire de
l'Anarchie de Pologne_ not till even later. The Polish book is
unfinished, and is said to have been garbled in manuscript. But it has
very considerable merits, though there is perhaps too much discussion in
proportion to the facts given. The Russian anecdotes deserve to rank
with the historical essays of Retz and Saint-Real in vividness and
precision of drawing.

These are the chief names of the century in history proper, for Volney,
who concludes it in regard to the study of history, is, like many of his
predecessors, rather a philosopher busying himself with the historical
departments and applications of his subject than a historian proper.
Still more may this be said of Diderot in such works as the _Essai sur
les Regnes de Claude et de Neron_. The creation of a school of
accomplished historians was left for the next century, when the
opportunity of such a subject as the French Revolution in the immediate
past, the stimulus of the precepts and views of the great writers on the
philosophy of history, and lastly the disinterring of the original
documents of mediaeval and ancient history, did not fail to produce
their natural effect. The number of historians of the first and second
class born towards the close of the eighteenth century is remarkable.

[Sidenote: Memoirs. Madame de Staal-Delaunay.]

[Sidenote: Duclos.]

[Sidenote: Besenval.]

[Sidenote: Madame d'Epinay.]

The first memoirs, properly so called, which have to be men