Page:Under Dispute (1924).pdf/112

 these men wrote with candour and acumen. No pleasure which they can have taken in compiling their memoirs can equal, or even approach, the pleasure with which we read them. Their accuracy is the accuracy of the observer, not of the antiquarian. "In my opinion," writes Comines, "you who lived in the age when these affairs were transacted have no need to be informed of the exact hours when everything was done." "I now make known to my readers," observes Joinville composedly, "that all they shall find in this book which I have declared I have seen and known, is true, and what they ought most firmly to believe. As for such things as I have mentioned as hearsay, they may understand them as they please."

These excursions into the diversified region of the memoir lead us away from the straight and narrow path of the autobiography. These saunterings