JULIUS CAESAR. 159 



act of his public life, and to doubt whether his conduct in 

 the Catiline conspiracy was all that he himself has depicted 

 it to be. This doubt is strengthened from other historical 

 sources ; and the acclamation which hailed him ' Father of 

 his Country ' was probably a cry of momentary impulse, which 

 a year later dwelt in few memories but his own. He met his 

 death, indeed, with fortitude ; but even here we have it from 

 a high contemporary authority that ' it was the sole calamity 

 which he bore as it became a man to do.' 



Incomparable as an advocate, these other and lower quali- 

 ties, and a certain jealousy as to his origin, forbade his ever 

 attaining the highest position as a statesman, especially at 

 the time of revolution in which his lot was cast. We have 

 various proofs that Cffisar and Pompey thoroughly understood 

 all his foibles, and worked upon them for their own purposes. 

 To the masculine vigour and singleness of Caesar's mind, in 

 particular, they appear in remarkable contrast, and there is 

 curious evidence how much the orator stood in awe of the 

 great commander even before his career of victory had begun. 

 We can well believe that the latter must often have smiled 

 at the mixed humility and vanity of Cicero's communications 

 with him ; the submissiveness of a conscious inferiority in 

 will and action the vanity of a man whom it is painful to 

 call a pedant, but who in reality was such. In the midst of 

 Cassar's last Spanish campaign, one of the most critical of his 

 life, Cicero introduced to him a young man, named Prsecilius, 

 in a letter interlarded as thickly with Greek phrases and quota- 

 tions as is a modern fashionable novel with French ; and, it 

 must needs be added, with as little pertinency or fitness. It 

 is true that he calls it genus novum litterarum', but still we 

 feel it strange that such a letter should have been written by 

 Cicero, and addressed to Csesar. 



There is something of moral wrong in indiscriminate praise 

 as in indiscriminate censure. To this further reproach we 



