f a quite contrary opinion to him, holding that, having especially to
follow the lives of the emperors of his time, so various and extreme in
all sorts of forms, so many notable actions as their cruelty especially
produced in their subjects, he had a stronger and more attractive matter
to treat of than if he had had to describe battles and universal
commotions; so that I often find him sterile, running over those brave
deaths as if he feared to trouble us with their multitude and length.
This form of history is by much the most useful; public movements depend
most upon the conduct of fortune, private ones upon our own. 'Tis rather
a judgment than a narration of history; there are in it more precepts
than stories: it is not a book to read, 'tis a book to study and learn;
'tis full of sententious opinions, right or wrong; 'tis a nursery of
ethic and politic discourses, for the use and ornament of those who have
any place in the government of the world. He always argues by strong and
solid reasons, after a pointed and subtle manner, according to the
affected style of that age, which was so in love with an inflated manner,
that where point and subtlety were wanting in things it supplied these
with lofty and swelling words. 'Tis not much unlike the style of Seneca:
I look upon Tacitus as more sinewy, and Seneca as more sharp. His pen
seems most proper for a troubled and sick state, as ours at present is;
you would often say that he paints and pinches us.

They who doubt his good faith sufficiently accuse themselves of being his
enemy upon some other account. His opinions are sound, and lean to the
right side in the Roman affairs. And yet I am angry at him for judging
more severely of Pompey than consists with the opinion of those worthy
men who lived in the same time, and had dealings with him; and to have
reputed him on a par with Marius and Sylla, excepting that he was more
close. Other writers have not acquitted his intention in the government
of affairs from ambition and revenge; and even his friends were afraid
that victory would have transported him beyond the bounds of reason, but
not to so immeasurable a degree as theirs; nothing in his life threatened
such express cruelty and tyranny. Neither ought we to set suspicion
against evidence; and therefore I do not believe Plutarch in this matter.
That his narrations were genuine and straightforward may, perhaps, be
argued from this very thing, that they do not alway