by Ben Jonson

If, my religion safe, I durst embrace
That stranger doctrine of Pythagoras,
I should believe, the soul of Tacitus
In thee, most weighty Savile lived to us:
So hast thou render’d him in all his bounds,
And all his numbers, both of sense and sounds.
But when I read that special piece restored,
Where Nero falls, and Galba is adored,
To thine own proper I ascribe then more,
And gratulate the breach I griev’d before;
Which fate, it seems, caus’d in the history,
Only to boast thy merit in supply.
O, would’st thou add like hand to all the rest!
Or, better work! were thy glad country blest,
To have her story woven in thy thread;
Minerva’s loom was never richer spread.
For who can master those great parts like thee,
That liv’st from hope, from fear, from faction free?
Thou hast thy breast so clear of present crimes,
Thou need’st not shrink at voice of after-times;
Whose knowledge claimeth at the helm to stand;
But wisely thrusts not forth a forward hand,
No more than Salust in the Roman state:
As then his cause, his glory emulate.
Although to write be lesser than to do,
We need a man that knows the several graces
It is the next deed and a great one too
Of history, and how to apt their places;
Where brevity, where splendor, and where height,
Where sweetness is required, and where weight;
We need a man can speak of the intents,
The councils, actions, orders, and events
Of state, and censure them; we need his pen
Can write the things, the causes, and the men:
But most we need his faith (and all have you,)
That dares not write things false, nor hide things true.

From W. Gifford, ed., The Works of Ben Jonson (London: Bickers and Son, 1875), 8:128–30.