oice: "'Back to Gibbon' is
already, both here and among the scholars of Germany and France, the
watchword of the younger historians."

I have now set forth certain general propositions which, with time for
adducing the evidence in detail, might, I think, be established: that,
in the consensus of learned people, Thucydides and Tacitus stand at the
head of historians; and that it is not alone their accuracy, love of
truth, and impartiality which entitle them to this preeminence since
Gibbon and Gardiner among the moderns possess equally the same
qualities. What is it, then, that makes these men supreme? In venturing
a solution of this question, I confine myself necessarily to the English
translations of the Greek and Latin authors. We have thus a common
denominator of language, and need not take into account the unrivaled
precision and terseness of the Greek and the force and clearness of the
Latin. It seems to me that one special merit of Thucydides and Tacitus
is their compressed narrative,--that they have related so many events
and put so much meaning in so few words. Our manner of writing history
is really curious. The histories which cover long periods of time are
brief; those which have to do with but a few years are long. The works
of Thucydides and Tacitus are not like our compendiums of history, which
merely touch on great affairs, since want of space precludes any
elaboration. Tacitus treats of a comparatively short epoch, Thucydides
of a much shorter one: both histories are brief. Thucydides and Macaulay
are examples of extremes. The Athenian tells the story of twenty-four
years in one volume; the Englishman takes nearly five volumes of equal
size for his account of seventeen years. But it is safe to say that
Thucydides tells us as much that is worth knowing as Macaulay. One is
concise, the other is not. It is impossible to paraphrase the fine parts
of Thucydides, but Macaulay lends himself readily to such an exercise.
The thought of the Athenian is so close that he has got rid of all
redundancies of expression: hence the effort to reproduce his ideas in
other words fails. The account of the plague in Athens has been studied
and imitated, and every imitation falls short of the original not only
in vividness but in brevity. It is the triumph of art that in this and
in other splendid portions we wish more had been told. As the French
say, "the secret of wearying is to say all," and this the Athenian
thoroughly un