" The impressions of Tacitus are indeed wonderful: I doubt,
whether volumes could bring us nearer to the mutinous legions, than the
few chapters in which he records their history. I am always delighted by
Gordon's way of telling the battle, in which the iron men of Sacrovir were
overthrown; the account begins on page 139. Then how satisfying is the
narrative of the wars in Germany, of the shipwreck, of the funeral of
Varus and the slaughtered legions; how pleasing the description of
Germanicus' antiquarian travels in Egypt, and in Greece. Though Tacitus is
not a maker of "descriptions," in our modern sense: there is but one
"description" in "The Annals," so far as I remember, it is of Capri; and
it is not the sort, that would be quoted by a reviewer, as a "beautiful
cameo of description." With Tacitus, a field of battle is not an occasion
for "word-painting," as we call it; the battle is always first, the
scenery of less importance. He tells, what it is necessary to know; but he
is too wise to think, that we can realise from words, a place which we
have never seen; and too sound in his taste, to forget the wholesome
boundaries between poetry and prose.
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