acknowledged by Gibbon: and he has left us four books of Memoirs,
detailing the early part of his father-in-law's history, and valuable
as being the work of an eye-witness of the most important events which
he describes. Anna Comnena appears to have considered it her duty to
take up the task which her husband had not lived to complete; and hence
the Alexiad--certainly, with all its defects, the first historical work
that has as yet proceeded from a female pen.

"The life of the Emperor Alexius," (says Gibbon,) "has been delineated
by the pen of a favourite daughter, who was inspired by tender regard
for his person, and a laudable zeal to perpetuate his virtues.
Conscious of the just suspicion of her readers, the Princess repeatedly
protests, that, besides her personal knowledge, she had searched the
discourses and writings of the most respectable veterans; and that
after an interval of thirty years, forgotten by, and forgetful of the
world, her mournful solitude was inaccessible to hope and fear: that
truth, the naked perfect truth, was more dear than the memory of her
parent. Yet instead of the simplicity of style and narrative which wins
our belief, an elaborate affectation of rhetoric and science betrays in
every page the vanity of a female author. The genuine character of
Alexius is lost in a vague constellation of virtues; and the perpetual
strain of panegyric and apology awakens our jealousy, to question the
veracity of the historian, and the merit of her hero. We cannot,
however, refuse her judicious and important remark, that the disorders
of the times were the misfortune and the glory of Alexius; and that
every calamity which can afflict a declining empire was accumulated on
his reign by the justice of Heaven and the vices of his predecessors.
In the east, the victorious Turks had spread, from Persia to the
Hellespont, the reign of the Koran and the Crescent; the west was
invaded by the adventurous valour of the Normans; and, in the moments