It is Thucydides himself whom you read throughout
under the names of Pericles, Nicias, &c. But in Herodotus it is just the
reverse. He has as little subjectivity as Homer, and, delighting in the
great fancied epic of events, he narrates them without impressing any thing
as of his own mind upon the narrative. It is the charm of Herodotus that he
gives you the spirit of his age--that of Thucydides, that he reveals to you
his own, which was above the spirit of his age.
The difference between the composition of a history in modern and ancient
times is very great; still there are certain principles upon which the
history of a modern period may be written, neither sacrificing all truth
and reality, like Gibbon, nor descending into mere biography and anecdote.
Gibbon's style is detestable, but his style is not the worst thing about
him. His history has proved an effectual bar to all real familiarity with
the temper and habits of imperial Rome. Few persons read the original
authorities, even those which are classical; and certainly no distinct
knowledge of the actual state of the empire can be obtained from Gibbon's
rhetorical sketches. He takes notice of nothing but what may produce an
effect; he skips on from eminence to eminence, without ever taking you
through the valleys between: in fact, his work is little else but a
disguised collection of all the splendid anecdotes which he could find in
any book concerning any persons or nations from the Antonines to the
capture of Constantinople.
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