Page:A Dissertation on Reading the Classics and Forming a Just Style.djvu/228

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184
These Historians

cters, I cannot help touching the Comparisons. Salust is represented as a concise, a strong and nervous Writer, and so far he agreeth with Thucydides's Manner, but he is also charged with being obscure, as concise Writers very often are, without any Reason. For, if I may Judge by my own Apprehensions, as I read him, no Writer can be more clear, more obvious and intelligible. He hath not indeed, as far as I can observe, one redundant Expression; but his Words are all weighed and chosen, so expressive and significant, that l will challenge any Critic to take a Sentence of his, and express it

clearer