[26] As it happens, De Quincey specially calls Cicero a man of conscience. "Cicero is one of the very few pagan statesmen who can be described as a thoroughly conscientious man," he says. The purport of his illogical essay on Cicero is no doubt thoroughly hostile to the man. It is chiefly worth reading on account of the amusing virulence with which Middleton, the biographer, is attacked.
[28] De Finibus, lib. v., ca. xxii.: "Nemo est igitur, qui non hanc affectionem animi probet atque laudet."
[29] De Rep., lib. vi., ca. vii.: "Nihil est enim illi principi deo, qui omnem hunc mundum regit, quod quidem in terris fiat acceptius." Tusc. Quest., lib. i., ca. xxx.: "Vetat enim dominans ille in nobis deus."
[30] De Rep., lib. vi., ca. vii.: "Certum esse in c[oe]lo definitum locum, ubi beati ævo sempiterno fruantur."
"Non rura quæ; Liris quieta Mordet aqua taciturnus amnis."
[32] Such was the presumed condition of things at Rome. By the passing of a special law a plebeian might, and occasionally did, become patrician. The patricians had so nearly died out in the time of Julius Cæsar that he introduced fifty new families by the Lex Cassia.
[35] It should be remembered that in Latin literature it was the recognized practice of authors to borrow wholesale from the Greek, and that no charge of plagiarism attended such borrowing. Virgil, in taking thoughts and language from Homer, was simply supposed to have shown his judgment in accommodating Greek delights to Roman ears and Roman intellects.
The idea as to literary larceny is of later date, and has grown up with personal claims for originality and with copyright. Shakspeare did not acknowledge whence he took his plots, because it was unnecessary. Now, if a writer borrow a tale from the French, it is held that he ought at least to owe the obligation, or perhaps even pay for it.
"O fortunatam natam me Consule Romam! Antoni gladios potuit contemnere, si sic Omnia dixisset."
[38] Life and Times of Henry Lord Brougham, written by himself, vol. i., p. 58.
[39] I give the nine versions to which I allude in an Appendix A, at the end of this volume, so that those curious in such matters may compare the words in which the same picture has been drawn by various hands.