But when so
employed the facts are worked into the texture of his argument, rather
than cited as extraneous witnesses.
In reading history it was his aim to get at a conspectus of the
general current of affairs rather than to study minutely a special
period. He tells Diodati in September, 1637, that he has studied
Greek history continuously, from the beginning to the fall of
Constantinople. When he tells the same friend that he has been long
involved in the obscurity of the early middle ages of Italian History
down to the time of the Emperor Rudolph, we learn from the commonplace
book that he had only been reading the one volume of Sigonius's
_Historia Regni Italici_. From the thirteenth century downwards he
proposes to himself to study each Italian state in some separate
history. Even before his journey to Italy he read Italian with as much
ease as French. He tells us that it was by his father's advice that he
had acquired these modern languages. But we can, see that they were
essential parts of his own scheme of self-education, which included,
in another direction, Hebrew, both Biblical and Rabbinical and even
Syriac.
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