Autobiography, they might all be entitled "Wahrheit und
Dichtung"--"Truth and Fiction." The proportion of the two
constituents changes indefinitely; and the quality of the
fiction varies through the whole gamut of unveracity.
But "Dichtung" is always there. For the most acute and learned
of historians cannot remedy the imperfections of his sources of
information; nor can the most impartial wholly escape the
influence of the "personal equation" generated by his
temperament and by his education. Therefore, from the narratives
of Herodotus to those set forth in yesterday's "Times," all
history is to be read subject to the warning that fiction has
its share therein. The modern vast development of fugitive
literature cannot be the unmitigated evil that some do vainly
say it is, since it has put an end to the popular delusion of
less press-ridden times, that what appears in print must be
true. We should rather hope that some beneficent influence may
create among the erudite a like healthy suspicion of manuscripts
and inscriptions, however ancient; for a bulletin may lie, even
though it be written in cuneiform characters.
Hotspur's starling, that was to be taught to speak nothing but
"Mortimer" into the ears of King Henry the Fourth, might be a
useful inmate of every historian's library, if "Fiction" were
substituted for the name of Harry Percy's friend.

But it was the chief object of the lecturer to the congregation
gathered in St. Mary's, Oxford, thirty-one years ago, to prove
to them, by evidence gathered with no little labour and
marshalled with much skill, that one group of historical works
was exempt from the general rule; and that the narratives
contained in the canonical Scriptures are free from any