I should willingly compare them with the Legends of the Saints, the Lives of Plotinus, Proclus, Isidore, and other writings of the same kind, in which historical truth and the desire to present models of virtue are combined in various degrees.

Inexactitude, which is one of the features of all popular compositions, is there particularly felt.

Let us suppose that ten or twelve years ago three or four old soldiers of the Empire had each undertaken to write the life of Napoleon from memory.

It is clear that their narratives would contain numerous errors, and great discordances.

One of them would place Wagram before Marengo: another would write without hesitation that Napoleon drove the government of Robespierre from the Tuileries; a third would omit expeditions of the highest importance.