INTRODUCTION.
I am conscious of a certain audacity in thus attempting
to give a further life of Cicero which I feel I may
probably fail in justifying by any new information;
and on this account the enterprise, though it has
been long considered, has been postponed, so that it
may be left for those who come after me to burn or
publish, as they may think proper; or, should it appear
during my life, I may have become callous, through
age, to criticism.
The project of my work was anterior to the life by
Mr. Forsyth, and was first suggested to me as I was
reviewing the earlier volumes of Dean Merivale’s
History of the Romans under the Empire. In an
article on the Dean’s work, prepared for one
of the magazines of the day, I inserted an apology
for the character of Cicero, which was found to be
too long as an episode, and was discarded by me, not
without regret. From that time the subject has
grown in my estimation till it has reached its present
dimensions.
I may say with truth that my book has sprung from
love of the man, and from a heartfelt admiration of
his virtues and his conduct, as well as of his gifts.
I must acknowledge that in discussing his character
with men of letters, as I have been prone to do, I
have found none quite to agree with me His intellect
they have admitted, and his industry; but his patriotism
they have doubted, his sincerity they have disputed,
and his courage they have denied. It might have
become me to have been silenced by their verdict;
but I have rather been instigated to appeal to the
public, and to ask them to agree with me against my
friends. It is not only that Cicero has touched
all matters of interest to men, and has given a new
grace to all that he has touched; that as an orator,
a rhetorician, an essayist, and a correspondent he
was supreme; that as a statesman he was honest, as
an advocate fearless, and as a governor pure; that
he was a man whose intellectual part always dominated
that of the body; that in taste he was excellent, in
thought both correct and enterprising, and that in
language he was perfect. All this has been already
so said of him by other biographers. Plutarch,
who is as familiar to us as though he had been English,
and Middleton, who thoroughly loved his subject, and
latterly Mr. Forsyth, who has struggled to be honest
to him, might have sufficed as telling us so much
as that. But there was a humanity in Cicero,
a something almost of Christianity, a stepping forward
out of the dead intellectualities of Roman life into
moral perceptions, into natural affections, into domesticity,
philanthropy, and conscious discharge of duty, which
do not seem to have been as yet fully appreciated.
To have loved his neighbor as himself before the teaching
of Christ was much for a man to achieve; and that he
did this is what I claim for Cicero, and hope to bring
home to the minds of those who can find time for reading
yet another added to the constantly increasing volumes
about Roman times.
