Laudator Temporis Acti

Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, "Brief Mention," American Journal of Philology 31.3 (1910) 358-369 (at 365-366):

There is no disputing the virtues and the value of Polybios. To everyone who has to do with history he is an inevitable study; and every earnest soul is apt to resent the contemptuous way in which that narrow rhetorician Dionysios of Halicarnassus dismisses him as Cicero dismisses those admirable orators whom no one reads. We say to ourselves, 'Polybios is interesting', but in the next breath we catch ourselves saying, 'He ought to be interesting', and wind up by asking ourselves the question: 'Why is he so tiresome'? Wisdom there is in Polybios, and to spare. Adventures there are that would furnish forth a library of shilling shockers. Why does not some one write a book of Stories from Polybios? There are glimpses of the life of the times such as we find in no other historian of antiquity. The lover of historical parallels will find a host of diagrams at his service. There are character sketches that remind one of the historical portraits in which moderns delight. There are bits of description that may give the topographer trouble, but which for all that seem singularly vivid to him who reads for entertainment. Those who have a weakness for anecdote and epigram cannot complain of any lack of such things in Polybios. The speeches have meaning, have point and are not merely rhetorical exercises on the parade-ground of the commonplace. He is a conscientious writer, in fact, he makes too much of his conscientiousness, and there is or ought to be a charm in honesty. But he preaches too much, he sprawls too much. He is scrupulous in the avoidance of hiatus, but there is one hiatus that he cannot escape, the yawn in the face of his reader.