V.On the Dramatic or Ancient Form of Historical Composition

Extract

In comparing ancient with modern historians, we meet with one remarkable circumstance in which they differ. The ancient historians are dramatic, the modern narrative. The ancients exhibit eminent persons delivering long speeches, adorned, as the occasion may require, with all the graces and force of eloquence. This is seldom done by the moderns. If it is ever necessary to give an account of what may have been delivered on an interesting subject by an eminent speaker, they tell us, excepting in such works as may be accounted translations, or in such histories, as those of Buchanan and Guicciardini, written manifestly after the models of antiquity, That he made use of such or such arguments; and, adhering strictly to the narrative form, they never venture on the bolder task of displaying him in his own person, delivering a long oration.