of the writer for "giving praises and thanks":--"laudes et grates
_habentem_" (I. 69): A Roman could not have said that: had he used
"laudes et grates," his phrase would have been "laudes et grates
_agentem_";--had he used "habentem," his phrase would have been
"laudes et grat_iam_" (or grat_ias_) "habentem." "Diisque et
_patria_ coram)" (IV. 8), is much more in keeping with the ragged
language of St. Jerome in his Vulgate than the precision of Tacitus
in his History:--There are two mistakes: the first is the collocation
of the preposition which has been already noticed; the second is the
phrase "standing before the _eyes_ of a country," which is the real
meaning of "patria _coram_"; it is akin to "looking a matter in the
_face_," which is met with,--(and which I almost deem elegant,)--
in the cumbrous oratory of Lord Castlereagh, but which I should be
very much astonished to discover had originated from the lips of
another statesman, the very opposite in speech of the renowned
Foreign Secretary,--the ornate and correct rhetorician, so famed
for the concinnity of his phrases, the Earl of Beaconsfield.

II. From the diction point of view, the Annals could not have been
written by Tacitus, as the language at times is anybody's but his.
When "ubi" signifies "where" (at the place itself), and not
"whither" (to a distance from the place where a person stands),
"Answer me, Blaesus, _whither_ have you thrown the corpse?"
"Responde, Blaese, _ubi_" (quo?) "cadaver abjeceris?" (I. 22)
it is the language of Suetonius in that passage in the life of
Galba, where he speaks of Patrobius casting the Emperor's head
into that place, where by Galba's order Patrobius's patron had
been assassinated; "eo loco, _ubi_" (quo) "jussu Galbae
animadversum in patronum suum fuerat, abjecit" (Galb. 20). When
two words are coupled with que--que we have the language of the