It was, perhaps, partly in imitation of Thucydides, that Sallust introduced into his history a number of words almost considered as obsolete, and which were selected from the works of the older authors of Rome, particularly Cato the Censor. It is on this point he has been chiefly attacked by Pollio, in his letters to Plancus. He has also been taxed with the opposite vice, of coining new words, and introducing Greek idioms; but the severity of judgment which led him to imitate the ancient and austere dignity of style, made him reject those sparkling ornaments of composition, which were beginning to infect the Roman taste, in consequence of the increasing popularity of the rhetoric schools of declamation, and the more frequent intercourse with Asia. On the whole, in the style of Sallust, there is too much appearance of study, and a want of that graceful ease, which is generally the effect of art, but in which art is nowhere discovered. The opinion of Sir J. Checke, as reported by Ascham in his _Schoolmaster_, contains a pretty accurate estimate of the merits of the style of Sallust. “Sir J. Checke said, that he could not recommend Sallust as a good pattern of style for young men, because in his writings there was more art than nature, and more labour than art; and in his labour, also, too much toil, as it were, with an uncontented care to write better than he could—a fault common to very many men. And, therefore, he doth not express the matter lively and naturally with common speech, as ye see Xenophon doth in Greek, but it is carried and driven forth artificially, after too learned a sort, as Thucydides doth in his orations. ‘And how cometh it to pass,’ said I, ‘that Cæsar’s and Cicero’s talk is so natural and plain, and Sallust’s writing so artificial and dark, when all the three lived in one time?’—‘I will freely tell you my fancy herein,’ said he; ‘Cæsar and Cicero, beside a singular prerogative of natural eloquence given unto them by God, were both, by use of life, daily orators among the common people, and greatest councillors in the Senate-house; and therefore gave themselves to use such speech as the meanest should well understand, and the wisest best allow, following carefully that good council of Aristotle, _Loquendum ut multi; sapiendum ut pauci_. But Sallust was no such man.’ ”