fligate; the whole transaction conducted with iniquity so deliberate and radical, with such a spirit of inexorable cruelty, as, like the adjudications of the present French tribunals, almost benumbs the hearers' faculties into incredulous aftonishment.

In the second Punick war, Roman virtue was at its meridian; from which, though the ascent to it had been tardy, the decline was rapid. Cæsar found his countrymen soaked and sodden in corruption, but he did not introduce it. The worst part of his conduct was during his consulship. Here he laid the foundation of that wicked greatness, the superstructure of which he hardly lived to finish. Even the execrable Sylla shewed some regard to the prosperity of his country, by four excellent regulations: first, as the constitution stood originally, that no reference should be made to the people, and no matter debated in their assembly, which had not been first canvassed and decreed by the Senate: secondly, by prohibiting the division and voting by tribes; next by the abolition of the tribune's negative, his power of convening the Senate, or entering into any business which did not relate to a Plebeian; and lastly, by the disqualification of all but Patricians from being eligible as judges in any cause publick or private. But though the wisdom of these measures is unquestionable, yet we are justified by our knowledge of Sylla's character in ascribing them to a much less laudable motive than regard for his country's welfare. The edicts by which he abolished the turbulent tribunitial power, were dictated chiefly by his enmity to Marius, and abhorrence of his faction. Every body of men, every principle, which had been favourable to the rival whom he detested, were naturally the objects of his persecution. While he was indulging his revengeful spirit, which otherwise than by the ruin of his enemy's partisans he could not indulge, he made many regulations beneficial to patricians; but these could have no confirmed operation till after he chose to abdicate; for during his dictatorship he never suffered his will to be disputed. His principal mental gratification was the devising of new modes

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modes of afflicting and tormenting the unhappy people who could be supposed to retain any attachment to the interest of Marius. This is a more consistent way of accounting for Sylla's acts as a statesman, than the efprit republicain to which Montesquieu is pleased to ascribe them.

With keen alacrity Cæsar exerted himself to overturn these salutary ordinances. All his proceedings having the same seditious tendency, Q. Catulus, the Prince of the Senate, declared aloud not long afterwards, "that Cæsar was not undermining the constitution, but storming it "with a battering ram."

But indefensible as is all this, how can we forget that he was at this time in strict junction with Pompey, who, if he did not suggest the measures, certainly connived at, nay sometimes openly abetted, them? To support an Agrarian law, and alienate the publick revenue, this moral citizen threatened to bring his sword as well as buckler, if necessary. To say he was deceived or managed by his associate, is at best a poor palliative for his principles, at the expence of his understanding; an apology with which, above all others, that great, but vain, man would have been least satisfied. Pompey had many obligations to Cicero, Cæsar had none; but they both let loose at him that monster Clodius, who seems to have lapped the blood of the Centaur, Nessus. To make this Roman Danton a more fatal implement of mischief, they agreed to metamorphose him into a Plebeian. In devising this expedient, or consenting to it, the infamy of Pompey exceeds Cæsar's; the latter only intended to worry an enemy, Pompey was base and ungrateful to a friend and benefactor. Had Tully been without any other claim to his protection, the oration for the Manilian law deserved a different requital.

It is perhaps no great credit to think erroneously of Cæsar with some of his admirers, with Dion Cassius, Paterculus, or St. Evremond; but if he was the worst man in the world, some of the best have taken pains to mislead our judgment; for who can rise from the perusal of Tully's orations

orations for Ligarius, for Marcellus, nay from the Philippicks, with an impression on his mind that all this incense was offered at the shrine of virtue existing only in the imagination of the orator? Had the heart of Julius been impenetrable to mercy, Cicero would not have chosen that quality which" droppeth like the gentle dew from heaven," as the subject of so much beautiful panegyrick.

He had great vices, and great virtues. He was intrepid and humane, considerate, friendly, and bountiful; "naturâ ulciscendo lenissimus," says the severe Suetonius; and he never remembered an offence or an injury when an overture was made towards a reconciliation. Before he ordered the pirates to be crucified, a fate with which he had often threatened them while their prisoner, he took care to have them first dispatched expeditiously; and perhaps he was the only gentleman of Rome, who would have listened to any dictate of humanity in the punishment of such villains.

For his own preservation he was in some measure forced into the civil war; and he was certainly ill-treated by the senate, which was rash enough to exasperate, without having strength enough to resist him.

It is not true that he exulted in fhedding the blood of his countrymen. Lucan, who says it often in very fine verse, is no authority, though Blackwell 'seems to have repeated it from him: at Pharsalia, he ordered his veterans to fall upon the allies, and spare the Romans; and "miles, faciem feri !” which Florus calls "vox ad victoriam efficax," was perfectly allowable. The slaughter of his victory filled his bosom with deep regret: "They would have it thus," was an expression wrung from the sincere anguish of his heart, and will admit of no perversion.

Had Cæsar never lived, Rome would have lost her liberty. Manners were so utterly changed, her dominions so extended, that the unwieldy empire could not have continued much longer under the form of a republick.

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When his incomparable abilities, the lenity of his disposition, his temperance, and conciliating manners, come to be fairly estimated, it is reasonable to conclude that had he lived at a later era, had the diadem descended to him by succession, he would probably have been the most wise and excellent sovereign that ever governed the empire. He was too sagacious to be perplexed by suspicion, and too intrepid to admit fear, that mean infirmity, that nidus in the bosom of despots, where so many base vices are for ever hatching, to crawl out for the plague and persecution of the subject.

The populace, and the army, were the stilts upon which Julius raised himself above the laws of his country. How cruelly they tyrannise in a neighbouring kingdom, the seat of injustice, rapine, desolation, and carnage, every day furnishes us with fresh examples. From the modification and noble spirit of the British troops, were their numbers trebled, nothing is to be apprehended, but by the enemy. The dregs of mankind, or the mob, are pretty much the same in all nations, ignorant, precipitate, venal, and sanguinary; and any appearance of their aiming at, or obtaining the supremacy, should be jealously watched, and vigourously put down, by every friend to good order and the existence of civil society. Every historical page of ancient Greece and Rome holds out a warning, every murderous record of modern France speaks to us on this subject, with "most miraculous organ."

There is no danger from a Cæsar, for who has his means, his boldness, and capacity? nor from such instruments as he employed, for we have a wise and vigilant government; but it is always a valuable occupation of leisure to examine the first seeds of revolutions, and to prevent the growth of those noxious weeds which seldom fail to spring

Such are the notions which I have been able to form of Cæsar's character if they are entirely ill founded, I know not where to discover fresh materials for better information.

NOTE

NOTE [C.] p. 146.

Prodigy is a fanciful province, from which the descriptive Muse does not wish to retire. speedily. The portents which are said to have been observed about the time of Cæsar's assassination offered a favourable occasion to the poetical courtiers of Augustus, to indulge their vein, and flatter the Emperor. Virgil and Ovid have accordingly described them with great force and majesty. When they both write on the same subject, it is not necessary to say which is most excellent. Some persons of acknowledged taste have been known to prefer Virgil to Homer, but I believe Ovid was never preferred to Virgil. Yet admirable as are the verses towards the conclusion of the first Georgick, they are perhaps surpassed by Shakspeare's sublimity on the same topick in the tragedy

of Hamlet.

The lines are in the part of Horatio, which being seldom filled by an eminent actor, I have never happened to hear them recited on the stage; and as they may possibly have escaped general notice, no apology is necessary for transcribing them. Mr. Malone (doubtless for the best reasons) does not exhibit the fifth line as it is found in other modern editions; but though I think there can be no appeal from his authority, rather than produce the passage imperfectly, I will give it as it stands. in the copy which happens to be next to me :

"In the most high and palmy state of Rome,

"A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,

"The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead

"Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;

"Stars fhone with trains of fire, dews of blood fell;

"Disasters dimm'd the sun; and the moist star,

Upon whose influence Neptune's empire hangs, "Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse."

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