Not youthful Ammon's envied, early wreath,
Not the black tides of fell proscriptive death,
Tides, that had wash'd from many a social mind
All the sweet charities of good and kind,

1810

In Cæsar's feeling breast could quite destroy Pity's mild springs, and friendship's generous joy.* His tongue, for ever ready to defend,

His hand, the willing bounty to extend,'

No

2 We find so few social virtues among the ancient Romans, their hospitality excepted, that wherever we can discover a humane propensity, we should, I think, cherish and applaud it.

3 O clementiam admirabilem, atque omni laude, prædicatione, literis, monumentisque decorandam! Cic. Pro Ligar.

Cæsar dando, sublevando, ignoscendo,-gloriam adeptus est.

SAL. in Bel. Catil. Tuum est, Cæsar, qui pro multis sæpe dixisti,-. Cic. Pro Reg. Deiotar. The two celebrated speeches of Cæsar and Cato upon the sentence to be pronounced against the Catilinarian conspirators, preserved, as it is called, by Sallust, seem to me no very satisfactory specimens of the manner of those eminent orators. He has doubtless preserved their different opinions upon the question, and probably the arguments by which they were supported; but there is nothing discriminating or characteristick in either, and they are plainly the author's composition: that is, the style, manner, and construction of the periods, are Sallust's. They not only

do

No wonder, spite of wild ambition's pride,

He liv'd endearing, and lamented died.

A soul so soft in every social part,

1815

The unwilling tongue calls tyrant, not the heart.

do not differ in these particular from each other, but they exactly resemble his diction every where. It may be observed perhaps of all the ancient historians who pretend to record the orations of particular men, that they make them all eloquent, and all equally so. Thucidydes and Livy abound with examples. We should consider them rather as ingenious expedients used by the historian to enliven and diversify his narrative, by not always appearing in his own person, than as faithful transcripts of orations delivered at the time by the speakers to whom he ascribes them. Let the reader compare the two following passages from the speeches of Cæsar and Cato, not only with the rest of the respective speeches, but with the whole structure of Sallust's diction.

CESAR. Plerique eorum, qui ante me sententias dixerunt, composite atque magnifice casum reipublicæ miserati sunt: quæ belli sævitia esset, quæ victis acciderent, enumeravere; rapi virgines, pueros; divelli liberos a parentum complexu; matres familiarum pati quæ victoribus collibuisfana atque domos exspoliari; cædem, incendia fieri: postremo, armis, cadaveribus, cruore atque luctu omnia compleri.

sent;

CATO. Bene et composite C. Cæsar paulo ante in hoc ordine de vitâ et morte disseruit, credo falsa existumans ea, quæ de inferis memorantur; diverso itinere malos a bonis loca tetra, inculta, fæda atque formidolosa habere, &c.

The speech which was really spoken by Cato, on this occasion, was taken down in short-hand by Cicero's order, and was extant in the time of Plutarch. See his Life of Cato, the Younger.

For these celeftial qualities, when time

With dust shall mould my perish'd form and rhyme, His murder told, the sympathetick tear

He knew to shed, shall grace his funeral bier;

1821

To save but half the wasteful sword destroy'd;
No rival on the guiltless rolls of fame

1829

Had vied with all-accomplish'd Cæsar's name.*
While projects boundless in his bosom roll❜d,
Scarce by the distant poles of heaven controll❜d,
At home, devoted to an earlier fate,

Unconscious in the shade of death he sat;

"Fuit in illo ingenium, ratio, memoria, literæ, cura, cogitatio, diligentia. CIC. Phil. ii.

Two finer compliments were perhaps never expressed in so few words as in this short apostrophe of Tully to Cæsar :- -Spero etiam te, qui oblivisci nihil soles, nisi injurias,-. CIC. Pro Ligar

Victim to liberty decreed to fall,

Streaming with blood, at Pompey's pedestal.'
The stoick Brutus led the daring deed;

By him he lov'd was Cæsar doom'd to bleed."
If this one action stain not Brutus' fame,
Rome's annals boast not any purer name;'
For still men doubt, in this impartial time,
To admire the virtue, or abhor the crime.
A thousand tender thoughts restrain'd his arm,
A thousand nobler thoughts his bosom warm;

1835

1840

"For some observations on the death and character of Cæsar, (too long for this place) see note (B) at the end of this volume.

* If then that friend demand, why Brutus rose against Cæsar, this is my answer, not that I loved Cæsar less, but that I loved Rome more. SHAKSP. Jul. Cæs.

Καισαρ ηθη τε σωζομενω, και κελευσας προς αυτόν ελθείν,

αιτίας, αλλά και τιμωμενον εν τοις μάλιςα περι αυτον ειχεν.

7 This was the noblest Roman of them all:

All the conspirators, save only he,
Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar;

He, only, in a general honest thought,

ου μόνον άφηκε της

PLUT. in Brut.

And common good to all, made one of them.

This sentiment of Anthony with respect to Brutus, is taken from the

old translation of Plutarch.

See SHAKSP. J. Cæsar, Malone's edit. vol. vii. p. 416.

Impell'd,

MARCUS BRUTUS..