Of HISTORICAL COMPOSITION. 93 



will appear, that he ufes figures more fparingly than is com- 

 monly imagined. Thovigh the general train of his narrative 

 be nervous, yet few parts of it are highly embelliihed. The 

 figures that he employs are ufed more frequently with a defiga 

 to explain his idea, than to annoxmce the ftrength of his emo- 

 tion ; and even when he has this laft purpofe in view, he often 

 employs interrogations, and fuch other modes of fpeech, as are 

 the ordinary language of paflion. 



FROM the juftnefs of TACITUS'S discernment, his fimiles are 

 remarkably happy. They are, indeed, rarely,' but they are al- 

 ways judicioufly introduced. It is, in every inftance, clear, 

 that he had perceived the refemblance ftrongly and diftinctly him- 

 felf ; and, by making the allufion, fome good purpofe is complete- 

 ly ferved. Thus, to give a lively idea of the torpid indolence of 

 VITELLIUS, in the 36th chapter of the jd book of his Hiftory,, 

 he compares him to thofe lazy animals, which, when the calls of 

 nature are fatisfied, have no other object of defire. " Sed um- 

 1 braculis hortorum abditus, ut ignava animalia, quibus fi ci~ 

 ! bum fuggeras jacent torpentque ; praeterita, inftantia, futura 

 ! pari oblivione dimiferat." The expreffion in the end of this 

 fentence is both bold and happy. The term dimiferat intimates, 

 a kind of activity even in the indulgence of floth ; and the term 

 obliviOy applied to the prefent and the future, infinuates, that 

 both perception and foreught were extinguimed, like the impref- 

 fions of memory when effaced. 



ONE of the boldefl, and, at the fame time, one of the hap- 

 pier! figures to be found in TACITUS, is that at the end of his 

 life of AGRICOLA. It is, at once, an inftance of the profopo 

 peia and the apoftrophe, as it fuppofes life in his father-in-law 

 who was dead, and gives prefence to a perfon who was abfent. 

 The high refpect entertained for the memory, and the deep 

 grief felt for the death of AGRICOLA, juftified the ufe of thefe. 

 bold figures ; and, as they are introduced with propriety, _,fo> 

 they are fupported. with the utmoft art. " Tu vero felix, 



" AGRICOLA. 



