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who only speaks of the eruption ; a moralist, or rather a theologian, 
who seems anxious to prove the correctness of the Sibyl, as a 
prophetess.* Very excellent and able men are sometimes in such 
cases inclined to see what they wish to see ; and to exaggerate, even 
when they do not actually invent. Then comes another witness. 
Statius may not be untruthful, but poetic licence has passed into a 
proverb, and a few houses with their inhabitants may have been 
exaggerated into 4 cities and peoples.’ Surely I may fairly ask for 
more distinctness in point of date ; above all, I have a right to demand 
some plain historical contemporary narrative , which may supply us not 
only with the date of the event , but also with the names of the buried 
cities 
How far can these demands be satisfied % This will be seen, when 
as we pass on to the grave historians of the period. 
4. The first whom I adduce is indeed one of lofty renown, Cornelius 
Tacitus. In the production of brief lightning-like phrases for the 
expression of the bitterest scorn or of the deepest pathos, Tacitus is 
unsurpassed, I had almost said unrivalled. It must suffice, in passing, 
to remind you of his description of the world beyond the grave as the 
home “ where fierce indignation can no longer lacerate the heart ” 
( ubi sceva indignatio cor ulterius lacerare nequit ), or his description of 
his father-in-law Agricola, hoping on his death-bed to meet the 
countenance of his daughter and her husband Tacitus : “ And in thy 
latest glance thine eyes looked longingly for something” (et in novis- 
simd luce aliquid desideravere oculi tui ; an expression for which a 
famous master of fiction thanked Rogers, though surely Rogers must 
have first borrowed it from this earlier source. t 
But in the power of simple and lucid narrative, of a plain state- 
ment of plain facts, Tacitus is by no means equally pre-eminent. 
The case before us needed such a narrative. What do we actually 
* It is true that Plutarch introduces an objector, but the tendency of the 
treatise appears to me to be unmistakably in the direction of belief in the Sibyl- 
line predictions. 
f ‘ 1 For a beautiful thought in the last chapter but one of The Old Curiosity 
Shop, I am indebted to Mr Rogers. It is taken from his charming tale Cinema. 
“ And long might’st thou have seen 
An old man wandering as in quest of something — 
Something he could not find — he knew not what.” 
Charles Dickens, Preface to Barnaby Budge, in 
Master Humphrey’s Clock, vol. iii. (ed, 1841). 
