254

He makes an observation, well worth remembering, upon several senti ments and opinions, which have been erroneously imputed to Tully; accounting for the mistake in this manner:-Many of Tully's treatises are thrown into the form of dialogues, and different parts in them assigned to different speakers, often with no other intention than that they should advance certain notions, in order to have them discussed and refuted. Careless readers, finding such opinions contained in writings under the name of Cicero, are apt to look no further, but to consider them as his; whereas they are produced for a purpose exactly opposite. Tully's. sentiments are too wise not to make us wish to have them genuine.

Middleton's defect is his too great partiality for, and indiscriminate approbation of, Cicero; not of his genius and capacity, for it is impossible to estimate these too highly, but he hardly admits that his favourite had any human frailties or foibles; and in general he admires his conduct as much as his talents. It would be no less trite to expatiate on Tully's vanity, than fruitless to endeavour to acquit him of it. It is not easy to find any page where Cicero mentions himself, without being obliged to agree with Lord Bolingbroke, that his own eulogium is the topick upon which he always dwells with the greatest complacency. But though he was fond of receiving praise, we must allow, at the same time, that he was always ready to confer it as liberally. His copiousness of panegyrick and invective seems to be equally inexhaustible.

He certainly loved virtue; and was a true friend to the Aristocracy of Rome, or the government of the Senate. He shewed great attachment to them, when with a strong persuasion in his mind that Cæsar would be successful, he went over to the camp of Pompey. In daring to undertake the defence of Roscius against the interest of Sylla, the most implacable and cruel of all tyrants, he displayed the genuine spirit of an advocate and a Roman. How vigorous was his conduct in his consulship, and how dignified in all his transactions with Antony! He met his death too from the executioner of that butcher with magnanimity.

But

But he was not always clear from imputation in pecuniary matters: he often flatters the man he hates, and vilifies him at one time with no less acrimony, than at another he had extravagantly extolled him. His nature seems to have been formed only for prosperity: the waves of adversity overwhelmed his spirit as much as his fortune. He bore his banishment with most piteous dejection of mind; and he sinks so under every domestick calamity, that in the condolance of his friends even a kind of disdain for his unmanly want of fortitude is discernible. His extreme sensibility induced him to think that his misfortunes were peculiarly distinguished from those of other men; and that neither himself nor the world could deplore them sufficiently. He was, notwithstanding, the most learned person of all antiquity, whose works have reached us; and had, perhaps, the most enlightened mind, the most versatile and universal capacity, that any Roman (if Julius Cæsar is not to be excepted) was ever endowed with. His most elegant translator is his most rigid censurer; and I should think him most likely to form a correct judgement of Cicero, who tempers the severity of Melmoth with the panegyrick of Middleton.

NOTE [B.] p. 144.

No character of antiquity having been more canvassed, and represented under colours more opposite, than Julius Cæsar, while some of the best masters have exhibited him in the darkest, I hope to be pardoned for employing a few lines to vindicate the rather favourable delineation which I have attempted of him in the verses under his title.

Most unworthy would be the endeavour to recommend his example as a pattern for the imitation of any subject who has the happiness to live under a free government; nor should he be suspected of harbouring such an intention, who declares it to be clearly his opinion that Cæsar was highly criminal, not only for conceiving the design of enslaving his

country,

country, but still more for the means he employed to accomplish his pernicious project.

Rome, it is true, gained nothing but increase of calamities by his death, or by the resolution of that great patriot and truly virtuous Roman who conspired against him, and who was constrained by the fatality of the times to resort to a mode of removing him, most adverse to his humane and generous disposition. This action of Brutus has been almost as variously represented as Cæsar's character.

His eloquence, the gracefulness of his person, his genius and taste for letters, the engaging manners, placability of disposition, dauntless courage unmixed with rashness, and consummate capacity for affairs of every kind, particularly for war, so conspicuous on all occasions in this daring ufurper, have been universally acknowledged.

His contemporary Tully always addresses him in the most elaborate strain of elegant encomium, and writes of him with inveterate malignity. Sallust, being his creature, describes him accordingly. In Florus, (a very beautiful writer,) we find a brief recital of some of his great achievements, but with little comment upon them. The courtly Paterculus varnishes like a Cæsarean. Wherever Cæsar is concerned, the firy Lucan (a perfect party-writer in verse, as has been remarked in a former note) observes no moderation. Suetonius, whose tendency seems to be vituperative, admits all his great qualifications and endowments, and rather unwillingly allows him to have possessed some good dispositions. We find in the ingenious Plutarch, removed from any personal interest in the subject, the good and the bad, as they had been transmitted to him. Dion Cassius and Appian are branded for the effrontery of their misrepresentations; and all that can be picked up from ancient miscellaneous fragments relating to this extraordinary man, is so evidently tinctured with the gall of prejudice, that it serves rather to shew how the writers contradict each other, than to assist our judgment.

LA

Among

Among the French, Montesquieu, who thinks with most depth, and writes with most solidity, upon Roman policy, from the nature of his plan has not many opportunities of detailing Cæsar's actions, or entering much into his personal character; but from what may be gathered, he imputes the subversion of the Republick to several other causes beside the dictator's ambition; and, as may be seen in a former quotation, (p. 135, n. 9.) he is of opinion, that from the superiority of his genius, let Julius have appeared when and where it might be, he must have been the ruler.

In our own language we have many Roman Histories, Essays, &c. Four Dissertations, in the form of lectures, by the learned Dr. Michael Kearney, formerly senior fellow of Dublin College, are deservedly in high estimation; but nothing I have yet seen appears to me comparable to the northern Blackwell's MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF AUGUSTUS. With the fire of Lucan, however, this able Author seems to inherit his partiality to Pompey, and inveteracy against his rival. He frankly puts him down as ready for every intended massacre; the fomenter of every sedition; and as being fully convicted of taking the lead in every plot and conspiracy against his country; where the proofs are suspicious, or at most only presumptive.—It is not necessary to go beyond notoriety to convict Cæsar of gross immorality.

Though my notions of the Roman government, of their early republican virtues, and of the unexampled depravity of Cæsar, happen not to coincide exactly with the opinions of this discerning writer, yet my respect for his learning and talents is in nowise abated by that selfish consideration; for I think his volumes a most animated and interesting performance, abounding with information as to the matter, full of nerve and ardour in the diction, and placing every period he treats of before the reader's view, with a masterly command of his subject. The Scoticisms, as they are called, which may be found now and then in the style, and which have given offence, real or affected, to some of our Priscians,

I

cians, are in my eyes maculæ too small to obscure the lustre of so bright a production. Yet determined as he is to find nothing but purity and excellence among the early Romans, the fratricide of Remus and the rape of the Sabine women give him no umbrage in the character of Romulus; he is not startled at the first Brutus, or the more unnatural Manlius, ordering and superintending the execution of their own children; nor at the cruelty of money-lenders to their insolvent debtors; their barbarity to their slaves, the bloody pastimes in the theatre, and other enormities, from which I flatter myself it is no affectation of singularity in me to turn with disgust and abhorrence. A general taken from the plough-tail to conquer his country's enemies, and returning to it after his triumph,—a statesman planting his own turnips, and feeding upon them as his favourite fare,-present no very flattering picture of society and manners. This is what Shakspeare calls emphatically, "to make man's life as cheap as beasts."

in

In the early Romans we see a very fierce and warlike people, frugal poverty, and cased round with some stony virtues, while they had no access to the means of corruption or luxury; but when these were. within their reach, indulging in them to excess. When there was temptation, they were tempted. They were sanguine, inconstant, and cruel; frequently persecuting their best citizens and benefactors; under false names and specious pretences subjugating mankind, and trying to extend their unjust dominion to the utmost boundaries of the universe. The dugs of the wolf were not confined to the suckling of Romulus and Remus. With all this we find among them prodigies of valour, of publick spirit, and of private virtue.

After many pages of violent invective, Dr. Blackwell calls Julius Cæsar "the most ambitious profligate" the nativities of Rome ever registered, and this at a time when with his usual animation he is depicting the proscriptions of the last bloody Triumvirs; when surely he had before his eyes THREE Romans not lefs ambitious, and much more pro

fligate;