We now come to that period of Cicero's life in which, by common consent of all who have hitherto written of him, he is supposed to have shown himself as least worthy¹ of his high name. Middleton, who certainly loved his hero's memory and was always anxious to do him justice, condemns³ him. "It cannot be denied that in this calamity⁴ of his exile he did not behave himself with that firmness which might reasonably be expected from one who had borne so glorious a part in the Republic." Morabin, the French biographer, speaks of the wailings of his grief, of its injustice⁷ and its follies⁸. "Cicéron était trop plein de son malheur pour donner entrée à de nouvelles espérances," he says. "Il avait supporté ce malheur avec peu de courage," says another Frenchman, M. Du Rozoir, in introducing us to the speeches which Cicero made on his return. Dean Merivale declares that "he marred⁹ the grace of the concession¹⁰ in the eyes of posterity¹¹"—alluding to the concession made to popular feeling by his voluntary departure from Rome, as will hereafter be described—"by the unmanly lamentations with which he accompanied it." Mommsen, with a want of insight into character wonderful in an author who has so closely studied the history of the period, speaks of his exile as a punishment inflicted¹² on a "man notoriously timid, and belonging to the class of political weather-cocks." "We now come," says Mr. Forsyth, "to the most melancholy¹³ period of Cicero's life, melancholy not so much from its nature and the extent of the misfortunes which overtook him, as from the 298abject

分享到：