The subject, according to what it is, may make a man looked upon as learned and of good memory; but to judge in him the parts that are most his own and the most worthy, the vigour and beauty of his soul, one must first know what is his own and what is not; and in that which is not his own, how much we are obliged to him for the choice, disposition, ornament, and language he has there presented us with.  What if he has borrowed the matter and spoiled the form, as it often falls out?  We, who are little read in books, are in this strait, that when we meet with a high fancy in some new poet, or some strong argument in a preacher, we dare not, nevertheless, commend it till we have first informed ourselves, through some learned man, if it be the writer’s wit or borrowed from some other; until that I always stand upon my guard.

I have lately been reading the history of Tacitus quite through, without interrupting it with anything else (which but seldom happens with me, it being twenty years since I have kept to any one book an hour together), and I did it at the instance of a gentleman for whom France has a great esteem, as well for his own particular worth, as upon the account of a constant form of capacity and virtue which runs through a great many brothers of them.  I do not know any author in a public narrative who mixes so much consideration of manners and particular inclinations:  and I am of a quite contrary opinion to him, holding that, having especially to follow the lives of the emperors of his time, so various and extreme in all sorts of forms, so many notable actions as their cruelty especially produced in their subjects, he had a stronger and more attractive matter to treat of than if he had had to describe battles and universal commotions; so that I often find him sterile, running over those brave deaths as if he feared to trouble us with their multitude and length.  This form of history is by much the most useful; public movements depend most upon the conduct of fortune, private ones upon our own.  ’Tis rather a judgment than a narration of history; there are in it more precepts than stories:  it is not a book to read, ’tis a book to study and learn; ’tis full of sententious opinions, right or wrong; ’tis a nursery of ethic and politic discourses, for the use and ornament of those who have any place in the government of the world.  He always argues by strong and solid reasons, after a pointed and subtle manner, according to the affected style of that age, which was so in love with an inflated manner, that where point and subtlety were wanting in things it supplied these with lofty and swelling words.  ’Tis not much unlike the style of Seneca:  I look upon Tacitus as more sinewy, and Seneca as more sharp.  His pen seems most proper for a troubled and sick state, as ours at present is; you would often say that he paints and pinches us.