y 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