a multitude of little boats were in full sight; every fisherman brought what he had taken; the fish were laid down at the feet of Pythius. Then Canius says, "Prithee, what does this mean? So many fish here? So many boats?" And he answered, "What wonder? All the fish for the Syracuse market are here; they come here to be in fresh water. The fishermen cannot dispense with this villa." Canius, inflamed with longing, begs Pythius to sell the place. He hesitates at first. To cut the story short, Canius over-persuades him. The greedy and rich man buys the villa for as high a price as Pythius chooses to ask, and buys the furniture too. He gives security; he finishes the business. Canius the next day invites his friends. He comes early; he sees not a thole. pin. He asks his next neighbor whether it is a fisherman's holiday, as he sees none of them. Not so far as I know," was the reply. "No fishermen are in the habit of fishing here. I therefore yesterday could not think what had occurred to bring them." Canius was enraged. But what was he to do? My colleague and friend, Aquillius, had not then published his forms of legal procedure in the case of criminal fraud, as to which when he was asked for a definition of criminal fraud, he replied, "When one thing is pretended, another done." This is perfectly clear, as might be expected from a man skilled in defining. Pythius, then, and all who do one thing while they pretend another, are treacherous, wicked, villainous. Therefore nothing that they do can be expedient, when defiled by so many vices.

64

With one brief sentence more from this remarkable volume, we end our representation of the De Officiis of Cicero. The sentence is one which sums up, in a single blended expression, at once the strange loftiness and the strange limitation of Cicero's moral ideal:

If one would only develop the idea of a good man wrapped up in his own mind, he would then at once tell himself that he is a good man who benefits all that he can, and does harm to no one unless provoked by injury.

"Unless provoked by injury "! The wings seemed strong enough to raise their possessor quite clear of the ground; but, alas, there was a hopeless clog tied fast to the feet. How easily that untaught young Judæan to be born a generation later, will say:

"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you."

The De Senectute (Concerning Old Age) of Cicero is an essay such almost as Addison, for example, might have issued in parts continued through several numbers of his Spectator. It is a charming meditation on a theme that Cicero's time of life when he wrote it inclined him and fitted him to make the subject of discourse. It was probably written not far from the date of the composition of the De Officiis. The literary form is that of a dialogue after the manner of Plato, in which Cato the Elder-an idealized and glorified man, as Cicero finely misrepresents the sturdy but boorish old censor of actual history-is the chief speaker. It is the gracious. personality of the writer himself, rather than the repellent, not to say repulsive, personality of the historic character represented, which diffuses that indescribable charm over the exquisite pages of the De Senectute. Cicero balances the good and the ill of old age, with a serene and suave philosophy, which, while you read, makes you feel as if it would be a thing delightful to grow old. We take a single passage, only too brief, from the concluding part of the dialogue. This passage will be found to disclose something of the spirit in which the transmitted influence of Socrates and Plato enabled Cicero, at least in his better, his more transfigured, moments, to contemplate the prospect of death. It forms a bland and beautiful contrast to the hid eous squalor of the old man depicted in Juvenal's satirical portrait. Cato is speaking to his younger companions in conversation-sons they of illustrious sires. He alludes to a son of his own, deceased,-" my Cato," he calls him, with pathetic reminiscence reminding one of Burke's uttered sorrow over his similar bereavement, and of Webster's over his. What we give brings the dialogue to its end:

I am transported with desire to see your fathers whom I revered and loved; nor yet do I long to meet those only whom I have known, but also those of whom I have heard and read, and about whom I myself have written. Therefore one could not easily turn me back on my lifeway, nor would I willingly, like Pelias, be plunged in the rejuvenating caldron. Indeed, were any god to grant that from my present age I might go back to boyhood, or become a crying child in the cradle, I should steadfastly refuse; nor would I be willing, as from a finished race, to be summoned back from the goal to the starting-point. For what advantage is there in life? Or rather, what is there of arduous toil that is wanting to it? But grant all that you may in its favor, it still certainly has its excess or its fit measure of duration. I am not, indeed, inclined to speak ill of life, as many and even wise men have often done, nor am I sorry to have lived; for I have so lived that I do not think that I was born to no purpose. Yet I depart from life, as from an inn, not as from a home; for nature has given us here a lodging for a sojourn, not a place of habitation. O glorious day, when I shall go to that divine company and assembly of souls, and when I shall depart from this crowd and tumult! I shall go, not only to the men of whom I have already spoken, but also to my Cato, than whom no better man was ever born, nor one who surpassed him in filial piety, whose funeral pile I lighted, the office which he should have performed for me,—but whose soul, not leaving me, but looking back upon me, has certainly gone into those regions whither he saw that I should come to him. This my calamity I seemed to bear bravely. Not that I endured it with an untroubled mind; but I was consoled by the thought that there would be between us no long parting of the way and divided life. For these reasons, Scipio, as you have said that you and Lælius have observed with wonder, old age sits lightly upon me. Not only is it not burdensome; it is even pleasant. But if I err in believing that the souls of men are immortal, I am glad thus to err, nor am I willing that this error in which I delight shall be wrested from me so long as I live; while if in death, as some paltry philosophers think, I shall have no consciousness, the dead philosophers cannot ridicule this delusion of mine. But if we are not going to be immortal, it is yet desirable for man to cease living in his due time; for nature has its measure, as of all other things, so of life. Old age is the closing act of life, as of a drama, and we ought in this to avoid utter weariness, especially if the act has been prolonged beyond its due length. I had these things to say about old age, which I earnestly hope that you may reach, so that you can verify by experience what you have heard from me.

We feel like performing an act of expiation. In preceding pages, we gave hard measure in judgment of the Roman character. We cannot revoke our sentence; for our sentence, we think, was mainly just. But we should like to strengthen our recommendation to mercy. Cicero, both by what he himself was, and by noble things that he here and there reports of his countrymen, inclines us, willingly persuaded, to relent from our extreme severity. They were a great race, not unworthy of their fame,-those ancient Romans; and Alpine flowers of moral beauty bloomed amid the Alpine snow and ice of their austere pride, their matter-offact selfishness.

As for Tully, his glory is secure. His own writings are his imperishable monument. Spoken against he may be, but he will continue to be read; and as long as he is read, he will enjoy his triumph. For no one can read Cicero, and not feel, in the face of whatever faults discovered, irresistibly propitiated toward him.

If, in an historic view of Rome, one might call Cæsar the sun of Roman history, with not less truth certainly might one call Cicero the sun of Roman literature.

VIII.
PLINY.

His letters are the chief thing that we have left of Pliny's productions. These letters possess great interest for moderns. They are indeed so interesting, that if Cicero's are more interesting, the reason, we are bound to say, lies chiefly in the fact that a greater man, a man who did greater things, wrote Cicero's letters. Intrinsically, the letters of Pliny are, in continuing charm for modern readers, no whit inferior to the letters of Cicero.

Caius Plinius Cæcilius Secundus, as we have before said, was a younger contemporary and friend of the historian Tacitus. He was also a friend of the great emperor Trajan. Pliny the Elder, whose adopted son he was, was an eccentric, enormously hard-working, man of letters, addicted to Natural History as a specialty. He perished-doubtful in what manner, whether by sudden disease, or by suffocation due to that convulsion of nature-in the great historic eruption of Vesuvius, whose phenomena he had been curiously observing.

Pliny the Younger, our author, was well-born, well-bred, and wealthy. All the circumstances of his life seemed propitious. He remained remarkably to the end an unspoiled favorite of fortune. His domestic experience was singularly pure and happy. He enjoyed many noble friendships. He achieved an active and successful career as advocate. He fulfilled important offices of state. He was at the same time a fascinated student, and a fascinating maker, of literature. He used his wealth to scatter bounty with a beneficent, as well as a munificent, hand. Altogether, a singularly engaging literary figure was Pliny. Scarcely inconsistent with this is it to add that Pliny, as provincial governor, put Christians to the rack. Such conduct on his part was of the age rather than of the man; while the humane, inquiring reluctance,. the compelled benignity, as it were, with which he pursued this conduct, was certainly rather of the man than of the age.

Pliny belonged, with Tacitus, and with Quintilian, to what, in contrast with the golden Augustan age, is called the silver age of Roman literature. It was a revival, but not a complete rehabilitation, of the literary spirit which the ripe Republic had brought to its height, but which the tyranny of the Empire, under bad emperors, had insupportably suppressed. Trajan was, as it were, a second Augustus, better perhaps and greater than the first, but with a Rome to rule irrecoverably less responsive than the Augustan, to virtue and greatness in her ruler.