Greenway"; the former, says Gordon, "has performed like a schoolmaster,
the latter like a school-boy." Anthony a Wood writes in another strain, in
the "Athenae Oxonienis": "A rare Translation it is, and the Work of a very
Great Master indeed, both in our Tongue and that Story. For if we consider
the difficulty of the Original, and the Age wherein the Translation lived,
it is both for the exactness of the version, and the chastity of the
Language, one of the most accurate and perfect translations that ever were
made into English." There is a rendering by Murphy, diffuse and poor; a
dilution of Gordon, worthy neither of Tacitus nor of the English tongue.
There are translations, too, into almost every modern language: I would
give the highest praise to Davanzati; a scholar of Tuscany, who lived in
the sixteenth century. In French, I cannot but admire the labours of M.
Burnouf: although the austere rules, the precise constructions, and the
easy comportment of the French prose are not suited to the style of
Tacitus, and something of his weight and brevity are lost; yet the
translator never loses the depth and subtilty of his author's meaning; his
work is agreeable to read, and very useful to consult. The maps and the
genealogical tables in the three volumes of Messrs. Church and Brodribb's
translation are also of the greatest service, and the notes are sometimes
most amusing.

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