Excerpt from Selections From Saint-Simon People who are old enough to write memoirs have usually lost their memory. This epigrammatic remark with which a recent writer, not old enough to have lost his memory, opens his reminiscences, has considerable truth in it. Historians now recognise that memoirs do not supply the certainty of history, for if the writers have dim memories, they have also lively imaginations. Saint-simon, the prince of memoir-writers, did not, it is true, begin to transcribe his memoirs till he was well ...
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Excerpt from Selections From Saint-Simon People who are old enough to write memoirs have usually lost their memory. This epigrammatic remark with which a recent writer, not old enough to have lost his memory, opens his reminiscences, has considerable truth in it. Historians now recognise that memoirs do not supply the certainty of history, for if the writers have dim memories, they have also lively imaginations. Saint-simon, the prince of memoir-writers, did not, it is true, begin to transcribe his memoirs till he was well past sixty, but from the age of twenty he had collected materials and made systematic notes. His memoirs were not merely the pastime of his old age but the serious business of his whole life. The result is that he has left us a picture of the Court of Versailles at the close of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth which is unsurpassed in interest. This interest is above all things human. The men and women who fill his canvas are vividly alive. With a few powerful and incisive strokes he first sketches their lineaments and then with merciless penetra tion proceeds to lay bare their souls. But his memoirs are also coloured by his own alert and energetic personality. They not only portray his age, but they reveal himself to judge of the fidelity of the picture, we must know something of the man. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at ... This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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