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 opinion has been quoted already—and D'Alembert. The latter declared, in 1761, that a historian who filled his work with speeches would be sent back to college. But the practice lingered on a little longer, being commonly defended by the plea that it was enlivening, and that it could not be really deceptive. The spirit of scientific criticism has now banished it for ever from history, and has relegated it to its proper sphere in the province of historical romance.

§ 13. Thucydides set the first great example of making historical persons say what they might have said. The basis of his conception was common to the whole ancient world: it was the sovereign