Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 20.djvu/22

6 inundations, they are remembered only for the mischief they have done.

Conquerors hold a middle rank between good kings and tyrants, but are most akin to the latter. As they have a glaring reputation, we are desirous of knowing the most minute circumstances of their lives; for such is the weakness of mankind, that they admire those who have rendered themselves remarkable for wickedness, and talk with greater pleasure of the destroyer than of the founder of an empire.

As for those princes who have neither distinguished themselves in peace nor in war; who have neither been remarkable for great virtues nor great vices; their lives furnish so little matter, either for imitation or instruction, that they are not worthy of being committed to writing. Of so many emperors of Rome, Greece, Germany, and Muscovy; of so many sultans, caliphs, popes, and kings; how few are there, whose names deserve to be recorded anywhere but in chronological tables, where they only serve to mark the different epochs.

There is commonplace among princes, as well as among the rest of mankind; yet such is the itch of writing, that no sooner is a prince dead, than the world is filled with volumes under the title of memoirs and histories of his life, and anecdotes of his court. By these means books have been multiplied in such a manner, that were a man to live a hundred years, and to employ them all in reading, he would not have time to run over what has been published relating to the history of Europe alone, for the two last centuries.