Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

tion not only of his own family, but of his friends and numerous guests; many of whom, of the first quality, used to pass several days with him in their excursions from Rome. But besides these that may properly be reckoned seats, with large plantations and gardens around them, he had several little inns, as he calls them, or baiting-places on the road, built for his accommodation in passing from one house to another.

His Tusculum House had been Sylla's, the dictator; and in one of its apartments had a painting of his memorable victory near Nola, in the Marsic war, in which

Cicero had served under him as a volunteer: it was about four leagues from Rome, on the top of a beautiful hill covered with the villas of the nobility, and affording an agreeable prospect of the city, and the country around it, with plenty of water flowing through his grounds in a large stream or canal, for which he paid a rent to the corporation of Tusculuma. Its neighbourhood to Rome gave him the opportunity of a retreat at any hour from the fatigues of the bar or the senate, to breathe a little fresh air, and divert himself with his friends or family: so that this was the place in which he took the most delight, and spent the greatest share of his leisure; and for that reason improved and adorned it beyond all his other houses.

When a greater satiety of the city, or a longer vacation in the forum, disposed him to seek a calmer scene, and more undisturbed retirement, he used to remove to Antium or Astura. At Antium he placed his best collection of books, and as it was not above thirty miles from Rome, he could have daily intelligence there of every thing that passed in the city. Astura was a little island, at the mouth of a river of the same name, about two leagues farther towards the south, between the promontories of Antium and Circæum, and in the view of them both; a place peculiarly adapted to the purposes of solitude, and a severe retreat; covered with a thick wood cut out into shady walks, in which he used to spend the gloomy and splenetic moments of his life. In the height of summer, the mansionhouse at Arpinum, and the little island adjoining, by the advantage of its groves and cascades, afforded the best defence against the inconvenience of the heats; where, in the greatest that he had ever remembered,

we find him refreshing himself, as he writes to his brother, with the utmost pleasure, in the cool stream of his Fibrenus. His other villas were situated in the more public parts of Italy, where all the best company of Rome had their houses of pleasure. He had two at Formic, a lower and upper villa; the one near to the port of Cajeta, the other upon the mountains adjoining. He had a third on the shore of Baice, between the lake Avernus and Puteoli, which he calls his Puteolan: a fourth on the hills of Old Cume, called his Cuman villa; and a fifth at Pompeii, four leagues beyond Naples, in a country famed for the pu rity of its air, fertility of its soil, and delicacy of its fruits. His Puteolan house was built after the plan of the Academy of Athens, and called by that name; being adorned with a portico and a grove, for the same use of philosophical conferences. Some time after his death, it fell into the hands of Antistius Vetus, who repaired and improved it; when a spring of warm water which happened to burst out in one part of it, gave occasion to the following epigram, made by Laurea Tullius, one of Cicero's freedmen.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[ocr errors][merged small]

making their last efforts either to oppress or preserve it; Cicero was the head of those who stood up for its liberty, which entirely depended on the influences of his counsels; he had many years, therefore, been the common mark of the rage and malice of all who were aiming at illegal powers, or a tyranny in the state; and while these were generally supported by the military power of the empire, he had no other arms, or means of defeating them, but his authority with the senate and people, grounded on the experience of his services, and the persuasion of his integrity; so that to obviate the perpetual calumnies of the factious, he was obliged to inculcate the merit and good effects of his counsels, in order to confirm people in their union and adherence to them, against the intrigues of those who were employing all hearts to subvert them. "The frequent "commemoration of his acts," says Quintilian," was not made so much for glory

66

as for defence; to repel calumny, and "vindicate his measures when they were "attacked" and this is what Cicero himself declared in all his speeches, "That no man ever heard him speak of

It will not seem strange, to observe the wisest of the ancients pushing this principle to so great a length, and considering glory as the amplest reward of a well-spent life, when we reflect, that the greatest part of them had no notion of any other reward or futurity; and even those who believed a state of happiness to the good, yet entertained it with so much diffidence, that they indulged it rather as a wish than a well-grounded hope, and were glad therefore to lay hold on that which seemed to be within their reach; a futurity of their own creating; an immortality of fame and glory from the applause of posterity. This, by a pleasing fiction, they looked upon as a propagation of life, and an eternity of existence; and had no small comfort in imagining, that though the sense of it should not reach to themselves, it would extend at least to others; and that they should be doing good still when dead, by leaving the example of their virtues to the." he said any thing glorious of himself, imitation of mankind. Thus Cicero, as "it was not through a fondness of praise, he often declares, never looked upon that "but to repel an accusation; that no to be his life, which was confined to this man who had been conversant in great narrow circle on earth, but considered his acts as seed sown in the immense universe, to raise up the fruit of glory and immortality to him through a succession of infinite ages nor has he been frustrated of his hope, or disappointed of his end; but as long as the name of Rome subsists, or as long as learning, virtue, and liberty preserve any credit in the world, he will be great and glorious in the memory of all posterity.

As to the other part of the charge, or the proof of his vanity drawn from his boasting so frequently of himself in his speeches both to the senate and the people, though it may appear to a common reader to be abundantly confirmed by his writings; yet if we attend to the circumstances of the times, and the part which he acted in them, we hall find it not only excusable, but in some degree even necessary. The fate of Rome was now brought to a crisis, and the contending parties were

himself but when he was forced to it: "that when he was urged with fictitious crimes, it was his custom to answer "them with his real services: and if ever

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

affairs, and treated with particular envy, "could refute the contumely of an enemy, "without touching upon his own praises; "and after all his labours for the common "safety, if a just indignation had drawn "from him, at any time, what might

66

seem to be vain-glorious, it might rea "sonably be forgiven to him: that when "others were silent about him, if he could "not then forbear to speak of himself, "that indeed would be shameful; but "when he was injured, accused, exposed "to popular odium, he must certainly be "allowed to assert his liberty, if they "would not suffer him to retain his dig nity."

66

This then was the true state of the case, as it is evident from the facts of his histo ry; he had an ardent love of glory, and an eager thirst of praise: was pleased, when living to hear his acts applauded; yet more still with imagining, that they would ever be celebrated when he was

dead:

dead: a passion which, for the reasons already hinted, had always the greatest force on the greatest souls: but it must needs raise our contempt and indignation, to see every conceited pedant, and trifling declaimer, who knew little of Cicero's real character, and still less of their own, presuming to call him the vainest of mortals. But there is no point of light in which we can view him with more advantage or satisfaction to ourselves, than in the contemplation of his learning, and the surprising extent of his knowledge. This shines so conspicuous in all the monuments which remain of him, that it even lessens the dignity of his general charac. ter; while the idea of the scholar absorbs that of the senator; and by considering him as the greatest writer, we are apt to forget, that he was the greatest magistrate also of Rome. We learn our Latin from him at school; our stile and sentiments at the college; here the generality take their leave of him, and seldom think of him more but as of an orator, a moralist, or philosopher of antiquity. But it is with characters as with pictures: we cannot judge well of a single part, without surveying the whole, since the perfection of each depends on its proportion and relation to the rest; while in viewing them all together, they mutually reflect an additional grace upon each other. His learning, considered separately, will appear admirable; yet much more so, when it is found in the possession of the first statesman of a mighty empire. His abilities as a statesman are glorious; yet surprise us still more when they are observed in the ablest scholar and philosopher of his age: but an union of both these characters exhibits that sublime specimen of perfection, to which the best parts, with the best culture, can exalt human nature.

No man, whose life had been wholly spent in study, ever left more numerous, or more valuable fruits of his learning in every branch of science, and the politer arts; in oratory, poetry, philosophy, law, history, criticism, politics, ethics; in each of which he equalled the greatest masters of his time; in some of them excelled all men of all times. His remaining works, as voluminous as they appear, are but a small part of what he really published; and though many of these are come down to us maimed by time, and the barbarity of the intermediate ages, yet they are just ly esteemed the most precious remains of

all antiquity, and, like the Sybilline books, if more of them had perished, would have been equal still to any price.

His industry was incredible, beyond the example, or even conception of our days; this was the secret by which he performed such wonders, and reconciled perpetual study with perpetual affairs. He suffered no part of his leisure to be idle, or the least interval of it to be lost. But what other people gave to the public shows, to pleasures, to feasts, nay even to sleep, and the ordinary refreshments of nature, he generally gave to his books, and the enlargement of his knowledge. On days of business, when he had any thing particular to compose, he had no other time for meditating but when he was taking a few turns in his walks, where he used to dictate his thoughts to his scribes who attended him. We find many of his letters dated before day-light; and some from the senate; others from his meals; and the crowd of his morning levee.

No compositions afford more pleasure than the epistles of great men: they touch the heart of the reader by laying open that of the writer. The letters of eminent wits, eminent scholars, eminent statesmen, are all esteemed in their several kinds: but there never was a collection that excelled so much in every kind as Cicero's, for the purity of stile, the importance of the matter, or the dignity of the persons concerned in them. We have above a thousand still remaining, all written after he was forty years old; which are a small part not only of what he wrote, but of what were actually published after his death by his servant Tiro. For we see many volumes of them quoted by the ancients, which are utterly lost; as the first book of his Letters to Licinius Calvus; the first also to Q. Axius; a second book to his son; a second also to Corn. Nepos; a third book to J. Cæsar; a third to Octavius; a third also to Pansa; an eighth book to M. Brutus ; and a ninth to A. Hirtius. Of all which, excepting a few to J. Cæsar and Brutus, we have nothing more left than some scattered phrases and sentences, gathered from the citations of the old critics and grammarians. What makes these letters still more estimable is, that he had never designed them for the public, nor kept any copies of them; for the year before his death, when Atticus was making some enquiry about them, he sent him word, that he had made no collection; and that Tiro

had

had preserved only about seventy. Here then we may expect to see the genuine man, without disguise or affectation; especially in his letters to Atticus, to whom he talked with the same frankness as to himself; opened the rise and progress of each thought, and never entered into any affair without his particular advice: so that these may be considered as the memoirs of his times; containing the most authentic materials for the history of that age, and laying open the grounds and motives of all the great events that happened in it; and it is the want of attention to them that makes the generality of writers on those times so superficial, as well as erroneous; while they chuse to transcribe the dry and imperfect relations of the later Greek historians, rather than take the pains to extract the original account of acts from one who was a principal actor

in them.

In his familiar letters he affected no particular elegance or choice of words, but took the first that occurred from common use, and the language of conversation. Whenever he was disposed to joke, his wit was easy and natural; flowing always from the subject, and throwing out what came uppermost; nor disdaining even a pun, when it served to make his friends laugh. In letters of compliment, some of which were addressed to the greatest men who ever lived, his inclination to please is expressed in a manner agreeable to nature and reason, with the utmost delicacy both of sentiment and diction, yet without any of those pompous titles and lofty epithets, which modern custom has introduced into our commerce with the great, and falsely stamped with the name of politeness; though they are the real offspring of barbarism, and the effects of degeneracy both in taste and manners. In his political letters, all his maxims are drawn from an intimate knowledge of men and things: he always touches the point on which the affair turns; foresees the danger, and foretels the mischief, which never failed to follow up on the neglect of his counsels; of which there were so many instances, that as an eminent writer of his own time observed to him, his prudence seemed to be a kind of divination, which foretold every thing that afterwards happened, with the vera city of a prophet. But none of his letters do him more credit than those of the recommendatory kind; the others shew his

wit and his parts, these his benevolence and his probity: he solicits the interest of his friends, with all the warmth and force of words of which he was master; and alleges generally some personal reason for his peculiar zeal in the cause, and that his own honour was concerned in the suc cess of it.

But his letters are not more valuable on any account, than for their being the only momuments of that sort, which remain to us from free Rome. They breathe the last words of expiring liberty; a great part of them having been written in the very crisis of its ruin, to rouse up all the virtue that was left in the honest and the brave, to the defence of their country. The advantage which they derive from this circumstance, will easily be observed by comparing them with the epistles of the best and greatest, who flourished afterwards in Imperial Rome. Pliny's letters are justly admired by men of taste: they shew the scholar, the wit, the fine gentle man; yet we cannot but observe a poverty and barrenness through the whole, that betrays the awe of a master. All his stories and reflections terminate in private life; there is nothing important in politics; no great affairs explained; no account of the motives of public counsels: he had borne all the same offices with Cicero, whom in all points he affected to emulate; yet his honours were in effect nominal, conferred by a superior power, and administered by a superior will; and with the old titles of consul and proconsul, we want still the statesman, the politician, and the magistrate. In his provincial command, where Cicero governed all things with supreme authority, and had kings attendant on his orders, Pliny durst not venture to repair a bath, or to punish a fugitive slave, or incorporate a company of masons, till be had first consulted and obtained the leave of Trajan,

His historical works are all lost: the Commentaries of his Consulship in Greek; the History of his own Affairs, to his return from exile, in Latin verse; and his Anecdotes; as well as the pieces that he published on Natural History, of which Pliny quotes one upon the Wonders of Nature, and another on Perfumes. He mas meditating likewise a general History of Rome, to which he was frequently urged by his friends, as the only man ca pable of adding that glory also to his country, of excelling the Greeks in a spe

46

ries of writing, which of all others was at that time the least cultivated by the Romans. But he never found leisure to execute so great a task; yet he has sketched out a plan of it, which, short as it is, seems to be the best that can be formed for the design of a perfect history. "He declares it to be the first and "fundamental law of history, that it "should neither dare to say any thing that was false, or fear to say any thing that "was true, nor give any just suspicion ei "ther of favour or disaffection; that in the "relation of things, the writer should observe the order of time, and add also "the description of places: that in all " great and memorable transactions, he "should first explain the councils, then "the acts, lastly the events; that in coun"cils he should interpose his own judgment, or the merit of them; in the acts, "should relate not only what was done, " but how it was done; in the events, "should shew what share chance, or rashness, or prudence had in them; that in regard to persons, he should describe "not only their particular actions, but the "lives and characters of all those who "bear an eminent part in the story; that "he should illustrate the whole in a clear, easy, natural stile, flowing with a per"petual smoothness and equability, free "from the affectation of points and sen“tences, or the roughness of judicial "pleadings."

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

We have no remains likewise of his poetry, except some fragments occasionally interspersed through his other writings; yet these, as I have before observed, are sufficient to convince us, that his poetical genius, if it had been cultivated with the same care, would not have been inferior to his oratorical. The two arts are so nearly allied, that an excellence in the one seems to imply a capacity for the other, the same qualities being essential to them both; a sprightly fancy, fertile invention, flowing and numerous diction. It was in Cicero's time, that the old rusticity of the Latin muse first began to be polished by the ornaments of dress, and the harmony of numbers; but the height of perfection to which it was carried after his death by the succeeding generation, as it left no mediocrity in poetry, so it quite eclipsed the fame of Cicero. For the world always judges of things by comparison, and because he was not so great a poet as Virgil and Horace, he was decried

room for

as none at all; especially in the courts of Antony and Augustus, where it was a compliment to the sovereign, and a fashion consequently among their flatterers, to make his character ridiculous wherever it lay open to them; hence flowed that perpetual raillery which subsists to this day, on his famous verses:

Cedant arma togæ concedat laurea linguæ, O fortunatain natam me Consule Romam.

And two bad lines picked out by the malice of enemies, and transmitted to posterity as a specimen of the rest, have served For Plutarch reckons him among the most to damn many thousands of good ones. eminent of the Roman poets; and Pliny the younger was proud of emulating him. in his poetic character; and Quintilian seems to charge the cavils of his censurers to a principle of malignity. But his own being written in the best manner of that verses carry the surest proof of his merit, age in which he lived, and in the stile of Lucretius, whose poem he is said to have revised and corrected for its publication, after Lucretius's death. This however is

certain, that he was the constant friend and generous patron of all the celebrated poets of his time; of Accius, Archias, Chilius, Lucretius, Catullus, who pays his thanks to him, in the following lines, for some favour that he had received from

him

:

Tully, most eloquent by far

Of all, who have been or who are,
Or who in ages still to come
Shall rise of all the sons of Rome,
To thee Catullus grateful sends
His warmest thanks, and recommends
His humble muse, as much below
All other poets he, as thou
All other patrons dost excel,
In power of words and speaking well.
CATULL. 47.

But poetry was the amusement only, and relief of his other studies; eloquence was his distinguished talent, his sovereign attribute: to this he devoted all the faculties of his soul, and attained to a degree of perfection in it, that no mortal ever surpassed; so that, as a polite historian observes, Rome had but few orators before him, whom it could praise; none whom it could admire. Demosthenes was the pattern by which he formed himself; whom he emulated with such success, as to merit what St. Jerom calls that beautiful cloge: Demosthenes has snatched

from

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »