Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Making of Western Europe, Vol. 1: Being an Attempt to Trace the Fortunes of the Children of the Roman Empire
The genesis of the present attempt must be sought in Professor W. P. Ker's fascinating book entitled T be Dark Ages, the first volume in Professor Saintsbury's series of Periods of European Literature. I am not so vain as to imagine that I can illustrate the political side of the period as he has illustrated the literary side; but it was his book that first stimulated in me a sort of thirst to know more about the Dark Ages, and, when once that thirst was created, mere idleness prompted me to try and put on paper, in simple form, such ideas as I had been able to collect.
These ideas are very few. I am continually reminded how little we know, how meagre and untrustworthy are our authorities, how much, to use Mommsen's words, we fall back upon 'the conventionally-received tradition which assumes the name of history a mass of mostly worthless legends, which have usually been put together without discrimination of the true character, either of legend or history.'
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
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.
