of no value in themselves:
thus the _Flores historiarum_ of the self-styled Matthew of Westminster,
perhaps the most popular of the English mediaeval chronicles, are almost
entirely taken from original works by Wendover and Matthew of Paris.[88]

IV. The critical investigation of authorship saves historians from huge
blunders. Its results are striking. By eliminating spurious documents,
by detecting false ascriptions, by determining the conditions of
production of documents which had been defaced by time, and by
connecting them with their sources,[89] it has rendered services of such
magnitude that to-day it is regarded as having a special right to the
name of "criticism." It is usual to say of an historian that he "fails
in criticism" when he neglects to distinguish between documents, when he
never mistrusts traditional ascriptions, and when he accepts, as if
afraid to lose a single one, all the pieces of information, ancient or
modern, good or bad, which come to him, from whatever quarter.[90]

This view is perfectly just. We must not, however, be satisfied with
this form of criticism, and we must not abuse it.

We must not abuse it. The extreme of distrust, in these matters, is
almost as mischievous as the extreme of credulity. Pere Hardouin, who
attributed the works of Vergil and Horace to mediaeval monks, was every
whit as ridiculous as the victim of Vrain-Lucas. It is an abuse of the
methods of this species of criticism to apply them, as has been done,
indiscriminately, for the mere pleasure of it. The bunglers who have
used this species of criticism to brand as spurious perfectly genuine
documents, such as the writings of Hroswitha, the _Ligurinus_, and the
bull _Unam Sanctam_,[91] or to establish imaginary filiations between
certain annals, on the strength of superficial indications, would have
discredited criticism before now if that had been possible. It is
praiseworthy, certainly, to react against those who never raise a doubt
about the authorship of a document; but it is carrying the reaction too
far to take an exclusive interest in periods of history which depend on
documents of uncertain authorship. The only reason why the documents of
modern and contemporary history are found less interesting than those of
antiquity and the early middle ages, is that the identity which nearly
always obtains between their apparent and their real authorship leaves
no room for those knotty problems of attribution in which