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.

It has been the habit of some latter writers, who have left to Cicero
his literary honors, to rob him of those which had been accorded to him
as a politician. Macaulay, expressing his surprise at the fecundity of
Cicero, and then passing on to the praise of the Philippics as
senatorial speeches, says of him that he seems to have been at the head
of the "minds of the second order." We cannot judge of the
classification without knowing how many of the great men of the world
are to be included in the first rank. But Macaulay probably intended to
express an opinion that Cicero was inferior because he himself had never
dominated others as Marius had done, and Sylla, and Pompey, and Caesar,
and Augustus. But what if Cicero was ambitious for the good of others,
while these men had desired power only for themselves?

Dean Merivale says that Cicero was "discreet and decorous," as with a
similar sneer another clergyman, Sydney Smith, ridiculed a Tory
prime-minister because he was true to his wife. There is nothing so open
to the bitterness of a little joke as those humble virtues by which no
glitter can be gained, but only the happiness of many preserved. And the
Dean declares that Cicero himself was not, except once or twice, and for
a "moment only, a real power in the State." Men who usurped authority,
such as those I have named, were the "real powers," and it was in
opposition to such usurpation that Cicero was always urgent. Mr.
Forsyth, who, as I have said, strives to be impartial, tells us that
"the chief fault of Cicero's moral character was a want of sincerity."
Absence of sincerity there was not. Deficiency of sincerity there was.
Who among men has been free from such blame since history and the lives
of men were first written? It will be my object to show that though less
than godlike in that gift, by comparison with other men around him he
was sincere, as he was also self-denying; which, if the two virtues be
well examined, will indicate the same phase of character.

But of all modern writers Mr. Froude has been the hardest to Cicero. His
sketch of the life of Caesar is one prolonged censure on that of Cicero.
Our historian, with all that glory of language for which he is so
remarkable, has covered the poor orator with obloquy. There is no pe