flows naturally and agreeably, for his was the age
of the greatest purity”: “Unde factum,
ut praestantium in literis virorum judicio Livio non
sit postponendus Tacitus, quin potius anteferendus:
non quod hujus floridum, ac meditationem et curam
olens dicendi genus, quale sub Vespasianis placuit,
ac indies exin degeneravit in affectatam quandam compositionem,
exolescente paulatim sermonis latini puritate, Livianae
dictioni, illi naturaliter amabiliterque fluenti (nam
id seculum purissimum fuit), aequari debeat, aut praeferri.”
Next came the Milanese schoolman, Alciati, who preferred
the certainly sometimes elegant and polished phrases
of Paulus Jovius (in his letter to Jovius himself
prefixed to the edition of 1558 of the renowned Bishop
of Nocera de’ Pagani’s principal production,
the 45 books of Historia Sui Temporis):—“they
will not ask of you the reason why you have not reached
the soft exuberance of Livy, after you have thoroughly
regretted imitating the calm solemnity of Sallust,
and been satisfied with only the few flowers you have
plucked with a discriminative hand out of the gardens
of Quintus Curtius more frequently than the thorny
thickets of Cornelius Tacitus”: “Non
reposcent a te rationem, cur lacteam Livii ubertatem
non sis assecutus; postquam et te omnino piguerit
Sallustii sobrietatem imitari, et satis tibi fuerit
pauculos tantum flores ex Quinti Curtii pratis, soepius
quam ex Cornelii Taciti senticetis arguta manu decerpsisse.”
Then succeeded, as fast as flakes falling in a snow-storm,
a long string of acute critics, each with his just
objections, and each more pointed than his predecessors
in his animadversions, down to the present day, when,
I suppose it may be said that the eminent Dr.
Nipperdey
stands foremost amongst the exposers of the bad Latinity
of Tacitus. The Tacitus, thus universally proclaimed,
and for nearly a dozen generations, not to be a competent
master of his own tongue, is not the Tacitus of the
History, it is the “Tacitus” of the Annals;
and when hereafter I point out who this “Tacitus”
of the Annals was,—an Italian “Grammaticus,”
or “Latin writer” of the fifteenth century,—the
reader will not be at all surprised that he every
now and then slips and trips in Latin;—on
the contrary, the reader would be amazed if it were
not so; because he would regard it as a thing more
than phenomenal,—as a matter partaking
of the miraculous;—he must consider himself
as coming in contact with a being altogether superhuman;—if
the “Tacitus” of the fifteenth century,
who, as a Florentine, may have been a complete master
of the choicest Tuscan, had written with the correctness
of the Tacitus of the first century, who, as befitted
a “civis Romanus” of consular rank, was
perfectly skilled in his native tongue;—aye,
quite as much so as Livy, Sallust, or any other accomplished
man of letters of ancient Rome.
