2.
It may be doubted, indeed, whether any individual ever rose to power by more virtuous and truly honourable conduct; the integrity of his public life was only equalled by the correctness of his private morals; and it may at first sight excite our wonder that a course so splendidly begun should afterwards so little fulfil its early promise. Yet it was a failure from the period of his Consulate to his Pro-prætorship in Cilicia, and each year is found to diminish his influence in public affairs, till it expires altogether with the death of Pompey. This surprise, however, arises in no small degree from measuring Cicero's political importance by his present reputation, and confounding the authority he deservedly possesses as an author with the opinions entertained of him by his contemporaries as a statesman. From the consequence usually attached to passing events, a politician's celebrity is often at its zenith in his own generation; while the author, who is in the highest repute with posterity, may perhaps have been little valued or courted in his own day. Virtue indeed so conspicuous as that of Cicero, studies so dignified, and oratorical powers so commanding, will always invest their possessor with a large portion of reputation and authority; and this is nowhere more apparent than in the enthusiastic welcome with which he was greeted on his return from exile. But unless other qualities be added, more peculiarly necessary for a statesman, they will hardly of themselves carry that political weight which some writers have attached to Cicero's public life, and which his own self-love led him to appropriate.
The advice of the Oracle,[110] which had directed him to make his own genius, not the opinion of the people, his guide to immortality (which in fact pointed at the above-mentioned distinction between the fame of a statesman and of an author), at first made a deep impression on his mind; and at the present day he owes his reputation principally to those pursuits which, as Plutarch tells us, exposed him to the ridicule and even to the contempt of his contemporaries as a "pedant and a professor."[111] But his love of popularity overcame his philosophy, and he commenced a career which gained him one triumph and ten thousand mortifications.
It is not indeed to be doubted that in his political course he was more or less influenced by a sense of duty. To many it may even appear that a public life was best adapted for the display of his particular talents; that, at the termination of the Mithridatic war, Cicero was in fact marked out as the very man to adjust the pretensions of the rival parties in the Commonwealth, to withstand the encroachments of Pompey, and to baffle the arts of Cæsar. And if the power of swaying and controlling the popular assemblies by his eloquence; if the circumstances of his rank, Equestrian as far as family was concerned, yet almost Patrician from the splendour of his personal honours; if the popularity derived from his accusation of Verres, and defence of Cornelius, and the favour of the Senate acquired by the brilliant services of his Consulate; if the general respect of all parties which his learning and virtue commanded; if these were sufficient qualifications for a mediator between contending factions, Cicero was indeed called upon by the voice of his country to that most arduous and honourable post. And in his Consulate he had seemed sensible of the call: "All through my Consulate," he declares in his speech against Piso, "I made a point of doing nothing without the advice of the Senate and the approval of the People. I ever defended the Senate in the Rostrum, in the Senate House the People, and united the populace with the leading men, the Equestrian order with the Senate."
Yet, after that eventful period, we see him resigning his high station to Cato, who, with half his abilities, little foresight, and no address,[112] possessed that first requisite for a statesman, firmness. Cicero, on the contrary, was irresolute, timid, and inconsistent.[113] He talked indeed largely of preserving a middle course,[114] but he was continually vacillating from one to the other extreme; always too confident or too dejected; incorrigibly vain of success, yet meanly panegyrizing the government of an usurper. His foresight, sagacity, practical good sense, and singular tact, were lost for want of that strength of mind which points them steadily to one object. He was never decided, never (as has sometimes been observed) took an important step without afterwards repenting of it. Nor can we account for the firmness and resolution of his Consulate, unless we discriminate between the case of resisting and exposing a faction, and that of balancing contending interests. Vigour in repression differs widely from steadiness in mediation; the latter requiring a coolness of judgment, which a direct attack upon a public foe is so far from implying, that it even inspires minds naturally timid with unusual ardour.