INTRODUCTION.

PHILIP DE COMMINES has been called the Father of Modern History. "His Memoirs," says Mr. Hallam, "almost make an epoch in historical literature. He is the first modern writer who in any degree has displayed sagacity in reasoning on the characters of men and the consequences of their actions, or who has been able to generalise his observations by comparison and reflection." This ability to discuss motives as well as events renders him far superior to Froissart, who, on the other hand, greatly exceeds him in picturesqueness of style and fertility of invention. Froissart merely described notable occurrences; Commines delineated great men, "The one," says Sir James Stephen, "had contemplated the strife of kings and kingdoms as a spectator of the Isthmian Games may have gazed at that heart-stirring spectacle. The other had watched the schemes of statesmen and the conflict of nations, with some approach to that judicial serenity which we ascribe to a member of the Amphictyonic Council." If Froissart may be termed the Livy of France, she had her Tacitus in Commines.

The Memoirs of Philip de Commines relate to one of the most interesting periods of history. In the words of the Preface to the old English translation of 1723: "He gives us a prospect of all the most memorable occurrences in the reigns of Louis XI., his son Charles VIII., Charles the last Duke of Burgundy, and Mary his only daughter and heir; as like

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wise a description of the most remarkable passages in England, Flanders, Germany, Italy, Spain, and other neighbouring countries, which happened in the space of thirtyfour years, from 1464 to 1498. He teaches with as much verity as plainness and simplicity of style, such fair lessons as will show princes the way of governing their people with gentleness and order. There it is to be seen how kings can never be at peace with their subjects, whilst they are at variance with the King of kings, to whom all mankind, of what dignity or qualification soever, must give an account. There it is to be seen how justice, equity, moderation, and uprightness in all things, is that which gives them a quiet and happy dominion over the hearts of their subjects, without employing either menaces or force. In short, his book is a pleasant and profitable field, full of infinite good fruits, useful for all conditions, in good fortune as well as bad,

for him that commands as well as him that obeys; and all enforced with such Christian-like persuasions, and fortified with such important and excellent precepts, that it is impossible to read them without being affected."

On the peculiar interest attaching to the Memoirs of Commines, Dr. Arnold has the following remarks: "The Memoirs of Philip de Commines terminate about twenty years before the Reformation, six years after the first voyage of Columbus. They relate, then, to a tranquil period immediately preceding a period of extraordinary movement; to the last stage of an old state of things, now on the point of passing away. Such periods, the lull before the burst of the hurricane, the almost oppressive stillness which announces the eruption, or, to use Campbell's beautiful image,

"The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below,'

are always, I think, full of a very deep interest. But it is not from the mere force of contrast with the times that follow,

nor yet from the solemnity which all things wear when their dissolution is fast approaching- the interest has yet another source: our knowledge, namely, that in that tranquil period lay the germs of the great changes following, taking their shape for good or for evil, and sometimes irreversibly, while all wore an outside of unconsciousness. We, enlightened by experience, are impatient of this deadly slumber; we wish in vain that the age could have been awakened to a sense of its condition, and taught the infinite preciousness of the passing hour. And as, when a man has been cut off by sudden death, we are curious to know whether his previous words or behaviour indicated any sense of his coming fate, so we examine the records of a state of things just expiring, anxious to observe whether in any point there may be discerned an anticipation of the great future, or whether all was blindness and insensibility. In this respect, Commines' Memoirs are striking from their perfect unconsciousness: the knell of the middle ages had been already sounded, yet Commines has no other notions than such as they had tended to foster; he describes their events, their characters, their relations, as if they were to continue for centuries. His remarks are such as the simplest form of human affairs gives birth to; he laments the instability of earthly fortune, as Homer notes our common mortality, or in the tone of that beautiful dialogue between Solon and Croesus, when the philosopher assured the king that to be rich was not necessarily to be happy. But resembling Herodotus in his simple morality, he is utterly unlike him in another point; for whilst Herodotus speaks freely and honestly of all men without respect of persons, Philip de Commines praises his master Louis the✔ Eleventh as one of the best of princes, although he witnessed not only the crimes of his life, but the miserable fears and suspicions of his latter end, and has even faithfully recorded

them. In this respect, Philip de Commines is in no degree superior to Froissart, with whom the crimes committed by his knights and great lords never interfere with his general eulogies of them: the habit of deference and respect was too strong to be broken, and the facts which he himself relates to their discredit, appear to have produced on his mind no impression."*

This tendency on the part of Commines to praise the princes who successively enjoyed his aid and allegiance, is thus noticed by Sir James Stephen:-" He regards Charles the Rash with that affectionate interest which the heroism even of the unwise will excite in the bosoms of the wisest. He contemplates Louis XI. with that combination of curiosity, attachment, and awe, which minds of more than ordinary power so often cherish for each other. The images of the fiery duke and of the crafty king were projected in bold relief on the imagination of this acute and vigilant observer; and the truth and distinctness of those images forms the great charm of his retrospect of his own eventful life. The higher charm of a just sensibility, whether to moral beauty or to the absence of it, is, however, wanting in his pages. He is the unqualified admirer, if not the unscrupulous apologist, of his royal master, and seems insensible alike to the. injustice of the ends at which he aimed, and to the baseness of the means by which he pursued them. Yet man is not less inconsistent in his faults and errors than in his virtues, and thus, even the utilitarian Commines is unable to survey the revolutions in which he so largely participated without an occasional, and apparently heartfelt acknowledgment that, in bringing to pass the disastrous catastrophes of the world's story, the will and agency of man are but instruments by which the Divine will accomplishes its immutable purposes

*Lectures on Modern History, pp. 117-119

of wisdom and of justice. In the subtlety of his analysis of the great characters of his generation-in the force and discrimination of his portraits of them in the sagacity with which he explores, and the perspicuity with which he interprets, the hidden causes of the events in which they acted,and in the vigorous dispersion of the mists with which ignorance or passion obscures the true aspect of human affairs, Commines is emphatically a Frenchman. In the reverence with which, on reaching the impassable limits of human investigation, he ceases to inquire, and pauses to adore, he rises higher still, and becomes not only a citizen, but a teacher of the great Christian Commonwealth.":

The composition of his Memoirs was the occupation of the last years of the life of Commines, when circumstances had, sorely against his will, condemned him to retirement and repose. He wrote the first six books in the years 1488—1494, and the last two, probably, in 1497-1501. They remained in manuscript until 1524, when the first edition was published by Galliot du Pré. This contained only so much of the work as related to the reign of Louis XI.; but as the book immediately became popular, the remainder was put to press and published in 1528. In 1552, Denys Sauvage rePublished the whole work, under the title which it now bears, and divided into books and chapters. This was the standard edition of Commines until 1649, when Denys Godefroy, historiographer of France, brought out a new one, in which he corrected numerous errors into which Sauvage had fallen. This edition was printed at the Royal Press in the Louvre, and Louis XIV. assisted with his own hands in pulling some of the copies of the first sheet. In 1747, another and still more accurate edition, with a copious appendix, was brought out by the celebrated Lenglet Dufresnoy. This has recently

Stephen's Lectures on the History of France, vol. ii., pp. 221–223.