ers. The task was one of extreme difficulty. The execution is almost
perfect.

The talent which is required to write history thus bears a considerable
affinity to the talent of a great dramatist. There is one obvious
distinction. The dramatist creates; the historian only disposes.
The difference is not in the mode of execution, but in the mode
of conception. Shakspeare is guided by a model which exists in his
imagination; Tacitus, by a model furnished from without. Hamlet is to
Tiberius what the Laocoon is to the Newton of Roubilliac.

In this part of his art Tacitus certainly had neither equal nor second
among the ancient historians. Herodotus, though he wrote in a dramatic
form, had little of dramatic genius. The frequent dialogues which he
introduces give vivacity and movement to the narrative, but are not
strikingly characteristic. Xenophon is fond of telling his readers, at
considerable length, what he thought of the persons whose adventures he
relates. But he does not show them the men, and enable them to judge for
themselves. The heroes of Livy are the most insipid of all beings, real
or imaginary, the heroes of Plutarch always excepted. Indeed, the
manner of Plutarch in this respect reminds us of the cookery of those
continental inns, the horror of English travellers, in which a certain
nondescript broth is kept constantly boiling, and copiously poured,
without distinction, over every dish as it comes up to table.
Thucydides, though at a wide interval, comes next to Tacitus.
His Pericles, his Nicias, his Cleon, his Brasidas, are happily
discriminated. The lines are few, the colouring faint: but the general
air and expression is caught.

We begin, like the priest in Don Quixote's library, to be tired with
taking down books one after another for separate judgment, and feel
inclined to pass sentence on them in masses. We shall therefore,
instead of pointing out the defects and merits of the different modern
historians, state generally in what particulars they have surpassed
their predecessors, and in what we conceive them to have failed.

They have certainly been, in one sense, far more strict in their
adherence to truth than most of the Greek and Roman writers. They do
not think themselves entitled to render their narrative interesting by
introducing descriptions, conversations, and harangues which have no
existence but in their own imagination. This improvement was gradually
introduced. History commenced amon