er than to buy it. I wish indeed it were as easy for me to
assist and promote in every way those excellent studies of yours as
it is pleasant and gratifying to have such help asked by a person
of your uncommon talents.

"As for the resolution you say you have taken to write to me and
request my answers towards solving those difficulties about which
for many ages writers of Histories seem to have been in the dark,
I have never assumed anything of the kind as within my powers, nor
should I dare now to do so. In the matter of Sallust, which you
refer to me, I will say freely, since you wish me to tell plainly
what I do think, that I prefer Sallust to any other Latin
historian; which also was the almost uniform opinion of the
Ancients. Your favourite Tacitus has his merits; but the greatest
of them, in my judgment, is that he imitated Sallust with all his
might. As far as I can gather from what you write, it appears that
the result of my discourse with you personally on this subject has
been that you are now nearly of the same mind with me respecting
that most admirable writer; and hence it is that you ask me, with
reference to what he has said, in the introduction to his
_Catilinarian War_--as to the extreme difficulty of writing
History, from the obligation that the expressions should be
proportional to the deeds--by what method I think a writer of
History might attain that perfection. This, then, is my view: that
he who would write of worthy deeds worthily must write with mental
endowments and experience of affairs not less than were in the doer
of the same, so as to be able with equal mind to comprehend and
measure even the greatest of them, and, when he has comprehended
them, to relate them distinctly and gravely in pure and chaste
speech. That he should do so in ornate style, I do not much care
about; for I want a Historian, not an Orator. Nor yet would I have
frequent maxims, or criticisms on the transactions, prolixly thrown
in, lest, by interrupting the thread of events, the Historian
should invade the office of the Political Writer: for, if the
Historian, in explicating counsels and narrating facts, follows
truth most of all, and not his own fancy or conjecture, he fulfils
his proper duty. I would add also that characteristic of Sallust,
in respect of which he himself chiefly praised Cato,--to be able to
throw off a great deal in few words: