Cicero
elegantly saith, is Animi janua, "the gate of the mind." None more
close than Tiberius, and yet Tacitus saith of Gallus, Etenim vultu
offensionem conjectaverat. So again, noting the differing character
and manner of his commending Germanicus and Drusus in the Senate, he
saith, touching his fashion wherein he carried his speech of
Germanicus, thus: Magis in speciem adornatis verbis, quam ut
penitus sentire crederetur; but of Drusus thus: Paucioribus sed
intentior, et fida oratione; and in another place, speaking of his
character of speech when he did anything that was gracious and
popular, he saith, "That in other things he was velut eluctantium
verborum;" but then again, solutius loquebatur quando subveniret.
So that there is no such artificer of dissimulation, nor no such
commanded countenance (vultus jussus), that can sever from a feigned
tale some of these fashions, either a more slight and careless
fashion, or more set and formal, or more tedious and wandering, or
coming from a man more drily and hardly.
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