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About Hesperian student / (Lincoln [Neb.]) 1872-1885 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 1, 1877)
a? Tin? LWK AND CllAU.UTF.tt OK TACTm?. ii literary one, it would have lieena partial failure. For ho was eminently a 01:111 of! actions us well as of thoughts. His strong j positive nature washouud to intluencecvcn a Koman life, while Ik- wiw handing down 1 iiumorlal words-to ai) posterity. In thishis ' character was rare, for yon seldom (hid Hit- elements tif a man ot letters and of the ! statesman c-tmhincd in 0110. True, there I . 1 was ho ilivino .Iiihns, bul .lulius was rare Generally speaking, those two elements !' character are antagonistic. II y em body iv Napoleon you must forget ilie Shakespeare. If you call to mind a Washington, you must leave oil" the Irving, Ihil when jou reineniher some of the closing words of the life of Agrio ola, forma wentia tvtrrnu, you must hoar in mind' that in sulmluncc he also said. "My political dignity was founded iiy Vespasian, increased hy Titus, an. 1 further advanced hy Do. initial)." Mo was Quaestor in 71, Tii- buno in 81, Praetor in 8.S, and consul suf fectus in 1)7, A. I). A third element uWocoult United largely to his greatness. He was ai. orator. lie was esteemed as such in a tune when eloquence abounded, when oratory was especially aimed at, and in a time when j the words of Cicero had hardly lost their ' echo in tho Forum. So Pliny remark ; that "il was the crowning glory of Ins! predecessor to have had Tacitus to deliver ' his funeral oration." When you would call to mind Tacitus, then, yon mut re member him as an essayist and critic, as a finished orator, as a politician and as a historian. But it is worthy of remark, that, as a historian, he was not merely so, hut hu was preeminently such. What Uncoil did for leasoning, what Shakes, pearc did for the drama, what Darwin and Tyot'iul and Ilu.xley have done for science, Tacitus long since did for history. For, says his great follower, Gibbon, "lie was the fust historian who applied the science of philosophy to the study of facts." He has thus been considered the Fathr of Philosophical Historv. So he was one of . those great men, who, as Ma can lay says, ever stand upon the mountain tops and catch the first rasof sunlight, while far below tho valleys are dark and shaded. His sunlight, however, was that which was received through the early mist of oarh ewpi'iienee. So he now stands he fore us a noble, a thinking, a Ituc-mindcd Koman. !ut we are not inclined to stop here. There are questions- thai still go beyond mid ask, What were the leading characteristics of the inward man? What, was his secret character ? What w as he to himself? These questions always come up when we see one, most especially when we look upon one so much a Human as. Tacitus. For those- there is only one an swot, "Out of tho abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," an.' never could this he said more truly of a mm than of Tacitus. So il is by his wn:ds- that we must know htm; and in sliuhiiig his words we pick up here and there many beautiful elements of his nature. First of all, he was patriotic. In the short treatise on the Germans, in one place he says, "Who further, saying nothing of the danger of a rough and tin known s-ca, would seek Germany, uninvi ting in its lands, stormy in ;is cliinaie, sad in its civili.ilion and appearance, un less it were his native land" This, we are assured came from the very depths of liN soul. In Ihi one sentence, because it so well expresses his own feelings, he teaches, that, for a man who cherishes his fatherdamT, there is no sen too wide or stormy, no danger too gieat, no incon veniences too grievous, no perils too enormous. We are assured that it was this patriotism which prompted him to write. For Ins sentences burn with it all along. It was the love of his country, and the sense of its imminent peril that moved his spirit to raise his hand and his voice in its defense. For his philosophic mind told him if there should not intervene some radical change in the policy of (hu government, it must soon go down. With this great motive ho wrote. And so great V J as
