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Search - Historical And Critical Essays - Vol II

Historical And Critical Essays Vol II
Author: Thomas De Quincey

HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAYS. THOMAS DE QUINCEY, AUTHOR OF CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, ETC. ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES - 1853 - CONTENTS - CICERO . STYLE RHETORIC . SECRET SOCIETIES CICERO. IN drawing attention to a great question of whatsoever nature connected with Cicero, there is no danger of missing our purpose through any want of repu... more »ted interest in the subject. Nomz ally, it is not easy to assign a period more eventful, a revolution more important, or a personal career more dramatic, than that period - that revolution-that career, which, with almost equal right, we may describe as , all essentially Ciceronian, by the quality of the interest which they excite. For the age, it was fruitful in great men but amongst them all, if we except the sublime Julian leader, none as regards splendor of endowments stood upon the same level as Cicero. For the revolution, it was that unique event which brought ancient civilization into contact and commerce with modern since if we figure the two worlds of Paganism and Christianity under the idea of two great continents, it is through the isthmus of Rome irnperialized that the one was virtually communicated with the other. Civil law and Christianity, the two central forces of modern civilization, were upon that isthmus of time ripened into potent establishments. And VOL. 11. 1 through those two establishments, combined with the antique literature, as through so many organs of metempsychosis, did the pagan world pass onwards, whatever portion of its own life was fitted for surviving its own peculiar forms. Yet, in a revolution thus unexampled for grandeur of results, the only great actor who stood upon the authority of his character was Cicero. All others, from Pompey, Curio, Domitius, Cato, down to the final partisans at Actium, moved by the authority of arms tanturn auctoritate valebant, quantum mibite and they could have moved by no other. Lastly, as regards the personal biography, although the same series of trials, perils, and calamities, would have been in any case interesting for themselves, yet undeniably they derive a separate power of affecting the mind from the peculiar merits of the individual concerned. Cicero is one of the very few pagan statesmen who can be described as a thoughtfully conscientious man. It is not, therefore, any want of splendid attraction in our subject from which we are likely to suffer. It is of this very splendor that we complain, as having long ago defeated the simplicities of truth, and preoccupied the minds of all readers with ideas politically romantic. All tutors, schoolmasters, academic authorities, together with the collective corps of editors, critics, commentators, have a natural bias in behalf of a literary man who did so much honor to literature, and who, in all the storms of this difficult life, manifested so mudh attachment to the pure literary interest. Readers of sensibility acknowledge the effect from any large influence of deep halcyon repose, when relieving the agitations of history as, for example, that which arises in our domestic annals from interposing between two bloody reigns, like those of Henry VIII. and his daughter Mary, the serene morning of a childlike king, destined to an early grave, yet in the mean time occupied with benign counsels for propagating religion or for protecting the poor. Such a repose, the same luxury of rest for the mind, is felt by all who traverse the great circumstantial records of those tumultuous Roman times, viz. the Ciceronian epistolary correspondence...

ISBN-13: 9781408612965
ISBN-10: 1408612968
Publication Date: 1/31/2008
Pages: 374
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Publisher: Read Books
Book Type: Paperback
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