LXV.
As to Tacitus, I did not even attempt to combat my partiality for him. I preferred him even to Thucydides, the Demosthenes of history. Thucydides relates, but does not give life and being. Tacitus is not the historian, but a compendium of mankind. His narration is the counter-blow of the fact in the heart of a free, virtuous, and feeling man. The shudder that one feels as one reads not only passes over the flesh, but is a shudder of the heart. His sensibility is more than emotion,—it is pity; his judgments are more than vengeance,—they are justice; his indignation is more than anger,—it is virtue. Our hearts mingle with that of Tacitus, and we feel proud of our kindred with him. Would you make crime impossible to your sons? Would you inspire them with the love of virtue? Rear them in the love of Tacitus. If they do not become heroes at such a school, Nature must have created them base or vile. A people who adopted Tacitus as their political gospel would rise above the common stature of nations; such a people would enact before God the tragical drama of mankind in all its grandeur and in all its majesty. As to me, I owe to his writings more than the fibres of the flesh, I owe all the metallic fibres of my being. Should our vulgar and commonplace days ever rise to the tragic grandeur of his time, and I become the worthy victim of a worthy cause, I might exclaim in dying, "Give the honor of my life and of my death to the master, and not to the disciple, for it is Tacitus that lived, and dies in me."