others, however,
invest their work with a spurious scholarliness, go the length of citing
authorities to support the point of view which they have taken, and
which they lay before you as the fruit of strenuous lucubrations.

These are the dangerous ones, and of this type is Victor Hugo's famous
tragedy Lucrezia Borgia, a work to which perhaps more than to any other
(not excepting Les Borgias in Crimes Celebres of Alexandre Dumas) is due
the popular conception that prevails to-day of Cesare Borgia's sister.

It is questionable whether anything has ever flowed from a distinguished
pen in which so many licences have been taken with the history of
individuals and of an epoch; in which there is so rich a crop of crude,
transpontine absurdities and flagrant, impossible anachronisms. Victor
Hugo was a writer of rare gifts, a fertile romancer and a great poet,
and it may be unjust to censure him for having taken the fullest
advantages of the licences conceded to both. But it would be difficult
to censure him too harshly for having--in his Lucrezia Borgia--struck a
pose of scholarliness, for having pretended and maintained that his work
was honest work founded upon the study of historical evidences. With
that piece of charlatanism he deceived the great mass of the unlettered
of France and of all Europe into believing that in his tragedy he
presented the true Lucrezia Borgia.

"If you do not believe me," he declared, "read Tommaso Tommasi, read the
Diary of Burchard."

Read, then, that Diary, extending over a period of twenty-three years,
from 1483 to 1506, of the Master of Ceremonies of the Vatican (which
largely contributes the groundwork of the present history), and the one
conclusion to which you will be forced is that Victor Hugo himself had
never read it, else he would have hesitated to bid you refer to a work
which does not support a single line that he has written.

As for Tommaso Tommasi--oh, the danger of a little learning! Into what
quagmires does it not lead those who flaunt it to impress you!

Tommasi's place among historians is on precisely the same plane as
Alexandre Dumas's. His Vita di Cesare Borgia is on the same historical
level as Les Borgias, much of which it supplied. Like Crimes Celebres,
Tommasi's book is invested with a certain air of being a narrative of
sober fact; but like Crimes Celebres, it is none the less a work of
fiction.

This Tommaso Tommasi, whose real name was Gregorio Leti--and it is