Of Tacitus himself, there is little for me to say: those, who know him, can judge for themselves; to those who do not, no words are able to convey an adequate impression. "Who is able to infuse into me," Cardinal Newman asks, "or how shall I imbibe, a sense of the peculiarities of the style of Cicero or Virgil, if I have not read their writings? No description, however complete, could convey to my mind an exact likeness of a tune, or an harmony, which I have never heard; and still less of a scent, which I have never smelled: and if I said that Mozart's melodies were as a summer sky, or as the breath of Zephyr, I shall be better understood by those who knew Mozart, than by those who did not." These truths are little remembered by modern critics: though, indeed, it is not possible to convey to a reader adequate notions about the style of an author, whom that reader has not pondered for himself; about his thoughts or his subjects, it may be different. Still, I may write something about the manner of Tacitus, which will not violate Cardinal Newman's laws, nor be an outrage to taste and common-sense. "It is the great excellence of a writer," says Dr. Johnson, "to put into his book as much as it will hold:" and if this judgment be sound, then is Tacitus the greatest of all writers in prose. Gordon says of him, "He explains events with a redundancy of images, and a frugality of words: his images are many, but close and thick; his words are few, but pointed and glowing; and even his silence is instructive and affecting. Whatever he says, you see; and all, that you see, affects you. Let his words be ever so few, his thought and matter are always abundant. His imagination is boundless, yet never outruns his judgment; his wisdom is solid and vast, yet always enlivened by his imagination. He starts the idea, and lets the imagination pursue it; the sample he gives you is so fine, that you are presently curious to see the whole piece, and then you have your share in the merit of the discovery; a compliment, which some able writers have forgot to pay to their readers." I would remark here, that many of the old writers give me the sense of handling things, they are definite and solid; while some of the moderns appear to play with words only, and never to come up with the objects of their pursuit: "we are too often ravished with a sonorous sentence," as Dr. Johnson says, "of which, when the noise is past, the meaning does not long remain." But of Tacitus, Gordon says, "His words and phrases are admirably adapted to his matter and conceptions, and make impressions sudden and wonderful upon the mind of man. Stile is a part of genius, and Tacitus had one peculiar to himself; a sort of language of his own, one fit to express the amazing vigour of his spirit, and that redundancy of reflections which for force and frequency are to be equalled by no writer before nor since."