_Thucydides_ likewise wrote his storie, not at home in Grece, but abrode in Italie, and therefore smelleth of a certaine outlandish kinde of talke, strange to them of _Athens_, and diuerse from their writing, that liued in Athens and Grece, and wrote the same tyme that _Thucydides_ did, as _Lysias, Xenophon, Plato_, and _Isocrates_, the purest and playnest writers, that euer wrote in any tong, and best examples for any man to follow whether he write, Latin, Italian, French, or English. _Thucydides_ also semeth in his writing, not so much benefited by nature, as holpen by Arte, and caried forth by desire, studie, labor, toyle, and ouer great curiositie: who spent xxvii. yeares in writing his eight bookes of his history. _Salust_ likewise wrote out of his Dionys. // contrie, and followed the faultes of _Thuc._ to Halycar. // moch: and boroweth of him som kinde of writing, ad Q. / which the Latin tong can not well beare, as _Casus_ Tub. de // _nominatiuus_ in diuerse places _absolutè positus_, as in Hist. Thuc. // that place of _Iugurth_, speaking _de leptitanis, itaque ab imperatore facilè quæ petebant adepti, missæ sunt eò cohortes ligurum quatuor_. This thing in participles, vsed so oft in _Thucyd._ and other Greeke authors to, may better be borne with all, but _Salust_ vseth the same more strangelie and boldlie, as in thies wordes, _Multis sibi quisque imperium petentibus_. I beleue, the best Grammarien in England can scarse giue a good reule, why _quisque_ the nominatiue case, without any verbe, is so thrust vp amongest so many oblique cases. Some man perchance will smile, and laugh to scorne this my writyng, and call it idle curiositie, thus to busie my selfe in pickling about these small pointes of Grammer, not fitte for my age, place and calling, to trifle in: I trust that man, be he neuer so great in authoritie, neuer so wise and learned, either, by other mens iudgement, or his owne opinion, will yet thinke, that he is not greater in England, than _Tullie_ was at _Rome_, not yet wiser, nor better learned than _Tullie_ was him selfe, who, at the pitch of three score yeares, in the middes of the broyle betwixt _Cæsar_ and _Pompeie_, whan he knew not, whether to send wife & children, which way to go, where to hide him selfe, yet, in an earnest letter, amongest his earnest Ad Att. // councelles for those heuie tymes concerning both Lib. 7. Epi- // the common state of his contrey, and his owne stola. 3. // priuate great affaires he was neither vnmyndfull nor ashamed to reason at large, and learne gladlie of _Atticus_, _the ready way to the Latin tong._ 301