because he knew that his public would otherwise behave as Dr. Johnson
did when Fox talked to him of Catiline's conspiracy. 'He withdrew his
attention and thought about Tom Thumb.'

There is no worse fault in criticism than to blame a work of art for
lacking qualities to which it makes no pretension. Tacitus is not a
'bad military historian'. He is not a 'military' historian at all.
Botticelli is not a botanist, nor is Shakespeare a geographer. It is
this fault which leads critics to call Tacitus 'a stilted pleader at a
decadent bar', and to complain that his narrative of the war with
Civilis is 'made dull and unreal by speeches'--because they have not
found in Tacitus what they had no right to look for. Tacitus inserts
speeches for the same reason that he excludes tactical details. They
add to the human interest of his work. They give scope to his great
dramatic powers, to that passionate sympathy with character which
finds expression in a style as nervous as itself. They enable him to
display motives, to appraise actions, to reveal moral forces. It is
interest in human nature rather than pride of rhetoric which makes him
love a good debate.

The supreme distinction of Tacitus is, of course, his style. That is
lost in a translation. 'Hard' though his Latin is, it is not obscure.
Careful attention can always detect his exact thought. Like Meredith
he is 'hard' because he does so much with words. Neither writer leaves
any doubt about his meaning. It is therefore a translator's first duty
to be lucid, and not until that duty is done may he try by faint
flushes of epigram to reflect something of the brilliance of Tacitus'
Latin. Very faint indeed that reflection must always be: probably no
audience could be found to listen to a translation of Tacitus, yet one
feels that his Latin would challenge and hold the attention of any