moderation. He tells a fine story finely, but he cannot tell a plain story
plainly. He stimulates, till stimulants lose their power." [See a fine
article on history, Ed. Her., 1828. Also in Macaulay's Miscellanies.]
We have taken occasion in the notes to point out not a few examples of
rhetorical pomp, and poetical coloring, and even needless
multiplication of words, where plainness and precision would have
been much better, and which may well surprise us in a writer of so
much conciseness. Lord Monboddo, in a very able, though somewhat
extravagant critique on Tacitus, has selected numerous instances of
what he calls the ornamented dry style, many of which are so concise,
so rough, and so broken, that he says, they do not deserve the name of
composition, but seem rather like the raw materials of history, than like
history itself (Orig. and Prog. of Lang., vol iii. chap. 12).
Still, few readers can fail to pronounce Tacitus, as Macaulay affirms,
and even Lord Monboddo admits him to be, the greatest of Latin
historians, superior to Thucydides himself in the moral painting of his
best narrative scenes, and in the delineation of character without a rival
among historians, with scarcely a superior among dramatists and
novelists. The common style of his narrative is, indeed, wanting in
simplicity, and sometimes in perspicuity. He does not deal enough in
the specific and the picturesque, the where, the when and the how. But
when his subject comes up to the grandeur of his conceptions, and the
strength of his language, his descriptions are graphic and powerful. No
battle scenes are more grand and terrific than those of Tacitus. Military
men and scholars have also remarked their singular correctness and
definiteness. The military evolutions, the fierce encounter, the doubtful
struggle, the alternations of victory and defeat, the disastrous rout and
hot pursuit, the carnage and blood, are set forth with the warrior's
accuracy and the poet's fire; while, at the same time, the conflicting
passions and emotions of the combatants are discerned, as it were, by
the eye of a seer--their hidden springs of action, and the lowest depths
of their hearts laid bare, as if by the wand of a magician. In the painting
of large groups, in the moral portraiture of vast bodies of men under
high excitement and in strenuous exertion, we think that Tacitus far
surpasses all other historians. Whether it be a field of battle or a
captured city, a frightened senate or a flattering court, a mutiny or a
mob, that he describes, we not only see in a clear and strong light the
outward actions, but we look into the hearts of all the mixed multitude,
and gaze with wonder on the changing emotions and conflicting
passions by which they are agitated.
His delineations of individual character are also marked by the same
profound insight into the human soul. Like the old Latin Poet, he might
have said,
"Homo sum; nihil humani a me alienum puto."
There is scarcely a landscape picture in his whole gallery. It is full of
portraits of _men_, in groups and as individuals, every grade of
condition, every variety of character, performing all kinds of actions,
exhibiting every human passion, the colors laid on with a bold hand,
the principal features presented in a strong light, the minuter strokes
omitted, the soft and delicate finish despised. We feel, that we have
gained not a little insight into the character of those men, who are
barely introduced in the extant books of Tacitus, but whose history is
given in the books that are lost. Men of inferior rank even, who appear
on the stage only for a short time, develope strongly marked characters,
which are drawn with dramatic distinctness and power, while yet the
thread of history is never broken, the dignity of history never sacrificed.
And those Emperors, whose history is preserved entire,--with them we
feel acquainted, we know the controlling principles, as well as the
leading events of their lives, and we feel sure that we could predict how
they would act, under almost any imaginable circumstances.
In a faithful portraiture of the private and public life of the degenerate
Romans, there was much to call for the hand of a master in satire. And
we find in the glowing sketches of our author, all the vigor and point of
a Juvenal, without his vulgarity and obscenity; all the burning
indignation which the Latin is so peculiarly capable of expressing, with
all the vigor and stateliness by which the same language is equally
characterized. Tacitus has been sometimes represented as a very
Diogenes, for carping and sarcasm--a very Aristophanes, to blacken
character with ridicule and reproach. But he is as far removed from the
cynic or the buffoon, as from the panegyrist
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