Charlemagne by Thomas de Quincey — Read

[FOOTNOTE: The History of Charlemagne; with a Sketch, and History of France from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Rise of the Carlovingian Dynasty. By G. P. R. JAMES, Esq. VOL. II.] [1832.]

History is sometimes treated under the splendid conception of 'philosophy teaching by example,' and sometimes as an 'old almanac; ' and, agreeably to this latter estimate, we once heard a celebrated living professor of medicine, who has been since distinguished by royal favor, and honored with a title, making it his boast, that he had never charged his memory with one single historical fact; that, on the contrary, he had, out of profound contempt for a sort of knowledge so utterly without value in his eyes, anxiously sought to extirpate from his remembrance, -- or, if that were impossible, to perplex and confound, -- any relics of historical records which might happen to survive from his youthful studies. 'And I am happy to say,' added he, 'and it is consoling to have it in my power conscientiously to declare, that, although I have not been able to dismiss entirely from my mind some ridiculous fact about a succession of four great monarchies, (for human infirmity still clings to our best efforts, and will forever prevent our attaining perfection,) still I have happily succeeded in so far confounding all distinctions of things and persons, of time and of places, that I could not assign the era of any one transaction, as I humbly trust, within a thousand years. The whole vast series of history is become a wilderness to me; and my mind, as to all such absurd knowledge, under the blessing of Heaven, is pretty nearly a _tabula rasa_.'