It is difficult to give any sketch of the argumentative part of this famed controversy, as the merit of all such discussion consists in the extreme accuracy and minuteness of investigation. The main scope, however, of the objections, is thus generally exhibited by Tunstall in his Latin epistle. He declares, “that as he came fresh from the perusal of Cicero’s genuine letters, he perceived that those to Brutus wanted the beauty and copiousness of the Ciceronian diction—that the epistles, both of Brutus and Cicero, were drawn in the same style and manner of colouring, and trimmed up with so much art and diligence, that they seemed to proceed rather from scholastic subtlety and meditation, than from the genuine acts and affairs of life—that when, both before and after the date of the letters to Atticus, several epistles had been addressed from Brutus to Cicero, and from Cicero to Brutus, it was strange that those which preceded the letters to Atticus should have been lost, and those alone remain which appear to have been industriously designed for an epilogue to the Epistles to Atticus—that such reasons induced him to suspect, but on looking farther into the letters themselves, he discovered many absurdities in the sense, many improprieties in the language, many remarkable predictions of future events, both on Brutus’s side and Cicero’s; but what was most material, a great number of historical facts, not only quite new, but wholly altered, and some even apparently false, and contradictory to the genuine works of Cicero.”
Such was the state of the controversy, as it stood between Tunstall and Middleton. In 1745, the year after Middleton had published his translation of the epistles, Markland engaged in this literary contest, and came forward in opposition to the authenticity of the letters, by publishing his “Remarks on the Epistles of Cicero to Brutus, and of Brutus to Cicero, in a Letter to a Friend.” The arguments of Tunstall had chiefly turned on historical inconsistencies—those of Markland principally hinge on phrases to be found in the letters, which are not Ciceronian, or even of pure Latinity.
I must here close this long account of the writings of Cicero—of Cicero, distinguished as the Consul of the republic—as the father and saviour of his country—but not less distinguished as the orator, philosopher, and moralist of Rome.—“Salve primus omnium Parens Patriæ appellate,—primus in togâ triumphum linguæque lauream merite, et facundiæ, Latiarumque [pg 286]Literarum parens: atque (ut Dictator Cæsar, hostis quondam tuus, de te scripsit,) omnium triumphorum lauream adopte majorem; quanto plus est, ingenii Romani terminos in tantum promovisse, quàm imperii[491].”
In the former volume of this work, I had traced the progress of the language of the Romans, and treated of the different poets by whom it was adorned till the era of Augustus. I had chiefly occasion, in the course of that part of my inquiry, to compare the poetical productions of Rome with those of Greece, and to show that the Latin poetry of this early age, being modelled on that of Athens or Alexandria, had acquired an air of preparation and authorship, and appeared to have been written to obtain the cold approbation of the public, or smiles of a Patrician patron, while the native lines of the Grecian bards seem to be poured fourth like the Delphic oracles, because the god which inspired them was too great to be contained within the bosom. In the prose compositions of the Romans, which have been considered in the present volume, though the exemplaria Græca were still the models of style, we have not observed the same servility of imitation. The agricultural writers of Latium treated of a subject in a great measure foreign to the maritime feelings and commercial occupations of the Greeks; while, in the Latin historians, orators, and philosophers, we listen to a tone of practical utility, derived from the familiar acquaintance which their authors exercised with the affairs of life. The old Latin historians were for the most part themselves engaged in the affairs they related, and almost every oration of Cicero was actually delivered in the Senate or Forum. Among the Romans, philosophy was not, as it had been with many of the Greeks, an academic dream or speculation, which was substituted for the realities of life. In Rome, philosophic inquiries were chiefly prosecuted as supplying arguments and illustrations to the patron for his conflicts in the Forum, and as guiding the citizen in the discharge of his duties to the commonwealth. Those studies, in short, alone were valued, which, as it is beautifully expressed by Cicero, in the person of Lælius—“Efficiant ut usui civitati simus: id enim esse præclarissimum sapientiæ munus, maximumque virtutis documentum puto.”
APPENDIX.
“Some felt the silent stroke of mouldering age,
Some hostile fury, some religious rage: