urse on universal history. There is not a little truth in
the saying. Still there are a few authors whose work deserves mention.
The great history of De Thou was written in Latin. But the century
produced in Mezeray's History of France the first attempt of merit on
the subject. Francois Eudes de Mezeray was the son of a surgeon, who
seems to have been of some means and position. Mezeray was educated at
Caen (he was born in 1610), and he early betook himself to historical
studies. After beginning by supervising a translated history of the
Turks, he set to work on his masterpiece, the _History of France_, which
appeared in three huge and splendid folios in 1643, 1646, and 1651. He
was accused of treating his predecessors with too great contempt; but
this was more than justified by the superiority, not merely in style but
in historical conception and attention to documentary evidence, which he
showed. Mezeray had been protected and pensioned by Richelieu, but under
Mazarin he became a violent pamphleteer and author of _Mazarinades_.
Later, when Louis XIV. was settled on the throne, he published an
abridgment of his own history, in which the keen scent of Colbert
discovered uncourtly strictures on the fiscal abuses of the kingdom.
Mezeray refused to alter them, and was mulcted accordingly of part of
his pension. He died in 1683, having earned the title of the first
historian, worthy of the name, of France. With due allowance for his
period, he may challenge comparison with almost any of his successors,
though his style, excellent at its best, is somewhat unequal. Perefixe
(who may have been assisted by Mezeray) is responsible for a history of
Henri IV.; Maimbourg for a history of the League which has some interest
for Englishmen because Dryden translated it. The same great English
writer projected but did not accomplish a translation from a much more
worthless historian, Varillas, who is notorious among his class for
indifference to accuracy. It is indeed curious that this century, side
by side with the most laborious investigators ever known, produced a
school of historians who, with some merits of style, were almost
deliberately unfaithful to fact. If the well-known saying ('Mon siege
est fait') attributed to the Abbe Vertot is not apocryphal[254], he must
be ranked in the less respectable class. But his well-known histories,
the chief of which is devoted to the Knights of Malta, were not wholly
constructed on this principl