Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Quote

They (Thucydides and Xenophon) maintained the dignity of history.

On the Study and Use of History, letter 5 (1752). Compare Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, book xi. chap. ii.; Horace Walpole, Advertisement to Letter to Sir Horace Mann; Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England, vol. i. chap. i.