Note 1334 — Chapter III

The two principal authorities on whom I have relied for the siege of Malta are Balbi and Vertot. The former was a soldier, who served through the siege, his account of which, now not easily met with, was printed shortly afterwards, and in less than three years went into a second edition,—being that used in the present work. As Balbi was both an eye-witness and an actor, on a theatre so limited that nothing could be well hidden from view, and as he wrote while events were fresh in his memory, his testimony is of the highest value. It loses nothing by the temperate, home-bred style in which the book is written, like that of a man anxious only to tell the truth, and not to magnify the cause or the party to which he is attached. In this the honest soldier forms a contrast to his more accomplished rival, the Abbé de Vertot.

This eminent writer was invited to compose the history of the order, and its archives were placed by the knights at his disposal for this purpose. He accepted the task; and in performing it he has sounded the note of panegyric with as hearty a good will as if he had been a knight hospitaller himself. This somewhat detracts from the value of a work which must be admitted to rest, in respect to materials, on the soundest historical basis. The abbé's turn for the romantic has probably aided, instead of hurting him, with the generality of readers. His clear and sometimes eloquent style, the interest of his story, and the dramatic skill with which he brings before the eye the peculiar traits of his actors, redeem, to some extent, the prolixity of his narrative, and have combined, not merely to commend the book to popular favor, but to make it the standard work on the subject.