the latter chiefly to describe countries and cities, which, with the
assistance of maps, they do pretty justly, and may be depended upon; but
as to the actions and characters of men, their writings are not quite so
authentic, of which there needs no other proof than those eternal
contradictions occurring between two topographers who undertake the
history of the same country: for instance, between my Lord Clarendon and
Mr Whitelocke, between Mr Echard and Rapin, and many others; where,
facts being set forth in a different light, every reader believes as he
pleases; and, indeed, the more judicious and suspicious very justly
esteem the whole as no other than a romance, in which the writer hath
indulged a happy and fertile invention. But though these widely differ
in the narrative of facts; some ascribing victory to the one, and others
to the other party; some representing the same man as a rogue, while
others give him a great and honest character; yet all agree in the scene
where the fact is supposed to have happened, and where the person, who
is both a rogue and an honest man, lived. Now with us biographers the
case is different; the facts we deliver may be relied on, though we
often mistake the age and country wherein they happened: for, though it
may be worth the examination of critics, whether the shepherd
Chrysostom, who, as Cervantes informs us, died for love of the fair
Marcella, who hated him, was ever in Spain, will any one doubt but that
such a silly fellow hath really existed? Is there in the world such a
sceptic as to disbelieve the madness of Cardenio, the perfidy of
Ferdinand, the impertinent curiosity of Anselmo, the weakness of
Camilla, the irresolute friendship of Lothario? though perhaps, as to
the time and place where those several persons lived, that good
historian may be deplorably deficient. But the most known instance of
this kind is in the true history of Gil Blas, where the inimitable
biographer hath made a notorious blunder in the country of Dr Sangrado,
who used his patients as a vintner doth his wine-vessels, by letting out