a meed for these, and all future relics of the public contests. For wherever the greatest rewards are propofed for virtue, there the best of patriots are ever to be found. Now, let every one respectively indulge the decent grief for his departed friends, and then retire. Thucydides. § 13. HAMLET to the Players. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lieve the town crier had spoke my lines. And do not faw the air too much with your hand; but ufe all gently: for in the very torrent, tempeft, and, as 1 may say, whirlwind of your paffion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh! it offends me to the foul, to hear a robustous periwig-pated fellow tear a paffion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who (for the most part) are capable of nothing, but inexplicable dumb shews and noise. Pray you, avoid it. Be not too tame neither: but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for any thing so overdone, is from the purpose of playing; whose end is to hold, as 'twere the mirror up to nature; to shew Virtue her own feature, Scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the cenfure of one of which must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh! there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, that, neither having the accent of Chriftian, nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought fome of nature's journeymen had made them, and not made them well; they imitated humanity so abominably. And let those that play your clowns, speak no more than is set down for them: for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be confidered:-that's villainous, and shews a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Sbakespeare. § 14. The Character of MARIUS. The birth of Marius was obscure, though some call it equestrian, and his education wholly in camps; where he learnt the first rudiments of war, under the greatest master of that age, the younger Scipio, who destroyed Carthage; till by long service, diftinguished valour, and a peculiar hardiness and patience of difcipline, he advanced himself gradually through all the steps of military honour, with the reputation of a brave and complete soldier. The obscurity of his extraction, which depressed him with the nobility, made him the greater favourite of the people; who, on all occafions of danger, thought him the only man fit to be trusted with their lives and fortunes; or to have the command of a difficult and defperate war: and, in trath, he twice delivered them from the most desperate, with which they had ever been threatened by a foreign enemy. Scipio, from the observation of his martial talents, while he had yet but an inferior command in the army, gave a kind of prophetic teftimony of his future glory; for being asked by some of his officers, who were supping with him at Numantia, what general the republic would have, in case of any accident to himself? That man replied he, pointing to Marius at the bottom of the table. In the field he was cautious and provident; and while he was watching the most favourable opportunities of action, affected to take all his measures from augurs and diviners; nor ever gave battle, till by pretended omens and divine admonitions he had inspired his foldiers with a confidence of victory; so that his enemies dreaded him as fomething more than mortal; and both friends and foes believed him to act always by a peculiar impulse and direction from the gods. His merit however was wholly military, void of every accomplishment of learning, which he openly affected to despise; fo that Arpinum had the fingular felicity to produce the most glorious contemner, as well as the most illustrious improver, of the arts and eloquence of Rome*. He made no figure, therefore, in the gown, nor had any other way of sustaining his authority in the city, than by cherishing the natural jealousy between the fenate and the people; that by this declared enmity to the one he. might always be at the head of the other; * Arpinum was also the native city of Cicero. whose : whose favour he managed, not with any view to the public good, for he had nothing in him of the statesman or the patriot, but to the advancement of his private interest and glory. In short, he was crafty, cruel, covetous, and perfidious; of a temper and talents greatly serviceable abroad, but turbulent and dangerous at home; an implacable enemy to the nobles, ever seeking occafions to mortify them, and ready to facrifice the republic, which he had saved, to his ambition and revenge. After a life spent in the perpetual toils of foreign or domestic wars, he died at last in his bed, in a good old age, and in his seventh confulship; an honour that no Roman before him ever attained. Middleton. § 15. ROMULUS to the People of Rome, after building the City. If all the strength of cities lay in the height of their ramparts, or the depth of their ditches, we should have great reason to be in fear for that which we have now built. But are there in reality any walls too high to be scaled by a valiant enemy? and of what use are ramparts in intestine divisions? They may serve for a defence against fudden incursions from abroad; but it is by courage and prudence chiefly, that the invafions of foreign enemies are repelled; and by unanimity, fobriety, and justice, that domeftic seditions are prevented. Cities fortified by the strongest bulwarks have been often seen to yield to force from without, or to tumults from within. An exact military discipline, and a fteady observance of civil polity, are the furest barriers against these evils. But there is ftill another point of great importance to be confidered. The profperity of fome rising colonies, and the speedy ruin of others, have in a great measure been owing to their form of government. Were there but one manner of ruling states and cities that could make them happy, the choice, would not be difficult; but I have learnt, that of the various forms of government among the Greeks and Barbarians, there are three which are highly extolled by those who have experienced them; and yet, that no one of these is in all respects perfect, but each of them has fome innate and incurable defect. Chuse you, then, in what manner this city shall be governed. Shall it be by one man? shall it be by a select number of the wisest among us? or § 16. The Character of SYLLA. Sylla died afrer he had laid down the dictatorship, and restored liberty to the republic, and, with an uncommon greatness of mind, lived many months as a private fenator, and with perfect security, in that city where he had exercised the most bloody tyranny: but nothing was thought to be greater in his character, than that, during the three years in which the Marians were masters of Italy, he neither dissembled his resolution of purfuing them by arms, nor neglected the war which he had upon his hands; but thought it his duty, first to chastise a foreign enemy, before he took his revenge upon citizens. His family was noble and patrician, which yet, through the indolency of his ancestors, had made no figure in the republic for many generations, and was almost sunk into obseurity, till he produced it again into light, by aspiring to the honours of the state. He was a lover and patron of polite letters, having been carefully instituted himself in all the learning of Greece and Rome; but from a peculiar gaiety of temper, and fondness for the company of mimics and players, was drawn, when young, into a life of luxury and pleasure; so that when he was sent quæstor to Marius, in the Jugurthine war, Marius complained, that in so rough and desperate a service chance had given him so soft and delicate a quæstor. But, whether roused by the example, or stung by the reproach of his general, he behaved himself in that in that charge with the greatest vigour and courage, suffering no man to outdo him in any part of military duty or labour, making himfelf equal and familiar even to the lowest of the foldiers, and obliging them by all his good offices and his money: so that he foon acquired the favour of his army, with the character of a brave and skilful commander; and lived to drive Marius himself, banished and proscribed, into that very province where he he had been contemned by him at first as his quæstor. He had a wonderful faculty of concealing his paffions and purposes; and was so different from himself in different circumstances, that he seemed as it were to be two men in one: no man was ever more mild and moderate before victory; none more bloody and cruel after it. In war, he practised the fame art that he had seen so successful to Marius, of raising a kind of enthusiasm and contempt of danger in his army, by the forgery of auspices and divine admonitions; for which end, he carried always about with him a little statue of Apollo, taken from the temple of Delphi; and whenever he had refolved to give battle, used to embrace it in fight of the foldiers, and beg the speedy confirmation of its promises to him. From an uninterrupted course of success and profperity, he affumed a furname, unknown before to the Romans, of Felix, or the Fortunate; and would have been fortunate indeed, says Velleius, if his life had ended with his victories. Pliny calls it a wicked title, drawn from the blood and oppreffion of his country; for which pofterity would think him more unfortunate, even than those whom he had put to death. He had one felicity, however, peculiar to himself, of being the only man in hiftory, in whom the odium of the most barbarous cruelties was extinguished by the glory of his great acts. Cicero, though he had a good opinion of his cause, yet detefted the inhumanity of his victory, and never fpeaks of him with respect, nor of his government but as a proper tyranny; calling him, " a master of three most pef" tilent vices, luxury, avarice, cruelty." He was the first of his family whose dead body was burnt; for, having ordered Marius's remains to be taken out of his grave, and thrown into the river Anio, he was apprehenfive of the fame insult upon his own, if left to the usual way of burial. A little before his death, he made his own epitaph, the sum of which was, " that no man had ever gone beyond him, in do ing good to his friends, or hurt to his " enemies." Middleton. § 17. HANNIBAL to SCIPIO AFRICANUS, at their Interview preceding the Battle of Zama. Since fate has so ordained it, that I, who began the war, and who have been so often on the point of ending it by a complete conquest, should now come of my I could wish, that our fathers and we And 1 : I knew very well, Hannibal, that it was the hope of your return which emboldened the Carthaginians to break the truce with us, and to lay afide all thoughts of a peace, when it was just upon the point of being concluded; and your present proposal is a proof of it. You retrench from their conceffions every thing but what we are, and have been long possessed of. But as it is your care that your fellowcitizens should have the obligations to you, of being eased from a great part of their burden, so it ought to be mine that they draw no advantage from their perfidioufness. Nobody is more fenfible than I am of the weakness of man, and the power of fortune, and that whatever we enterprize is subject to a thousand chances. If, before the Romans passed into Africa, you had of your own accord quitted Italy, and made the offers you now make, I believe they would not have been rejected. But as you have been forced out of Italy, and we are mafters here of the open country, the fituation of things is much altered. And, what is chiefly to be confidered, the Carthaginians, by the late treaty which we entered into at their request, were, over and above what you offer, to have restored to us our prifoners without ransom, delivered up their ships of war, paid us five thousand talents, and to have given hoftages for the performance of all. The fenate accepted these conditions, but Carthage failed on her part; Carthage deceived us. What then is to be done? Are the Carthaginians to be released from the most important articles of the treaty, as a reward of their breach of faith? No, certainly. If, to the conditions before agreed upon, you had added fome new articles to our advantage, there would have been matter of reference to the Roman people; but when, instead of adding, you retrench, there is no room for deliberation. The Carthaginians therefere must submit to us at difcretion, or must vanquish us in battle. Hooke. : §19. The Character of POMPEY. Pompey had early acquired the furname of the Great, by that fort of merit which, from the conftitution of the republic, neceffarily made him great; a fame and fuccess in war, superior to what Rome had ever known in the most celebrated of her generals. He had triumphed, at three several times, over the three different parts of the known world, Europe, Afia, Africa; and by his victories had almost doubled the extent, as well as the revenues of the Roman dominion; for, as he declared to the people on his return from the Mithridatic war, he had found the lesser Afia the boundary, but left it the middle of their empire. He was about fix years older than Cæfar; and while Cæfar, immersed in pleasures, oppreffed with debts, and suspected by all honest men, was hardly able to shew his head, Pompey was flourishing in the height of power and glory; and, by the content of all parties, placed at the head of the republic. This was the poft that his ambition seemed to aim at, to be the first man in Rome; the leader, not the tyrant of his country; for he more than once had it in his power to have made himself the master of it without any risk, if his virtue, or his phlegm at least, had not restrained him: but he lived in a perpetual expectation of receiving from the gift of the people, what he did not care to seize by force; and, by fomenting the disorders of the city, hoped to drive them to the neceffity of creating him dictator. It is an observation of all the hiftorians, that while Cæfar made no difference of power, whether it was conferred or ufurped, whether over those who loved, or those who feared him; Pompey feemed to value none but what was offered; nor to have any defire to govern, but with the good-will of the governed. What leifure he found from his wars, he employed in the study of polite letters, and especially of eloquence, in which he would have acquired great fame, if his genius had not drawn him to the more dazzling glory of arms; yet he pleaded feveral caufes with applause, in the defence of his friends and clients; and fome of them in conjunction with Cicero. His language was copious and elevated; his fentiments juft; his voice sweet; his action noble, and full of dignity. But his talents were better formed for arms than, the gown; for though in both he obferved the fame difcipline, Pharfalia, was forced to confefs, that he had trusted too much to his hopes; and that Cicero had judged better, and seen farther into things than he. The refolution of seeking refuge in Egypt finished the fad catastrophe of this great man; the father of the reigning prince had been highly obliged to him for his protection at Rome, and restoration to his kingdom: and the son had fent a confiderable fleet to his assistance in the present war: but in this ruin of his fortunes, what gratitude was there to be expected from a court governed by eunuchs and mercenary Greeks? all whose politics turned, not on the honour of the king, but the establishment of their own power; which was likely to be eclipfed by the admiffion of Pompey. How happy had it been for him to have died in that fickness, when all Italy was putting up vows and prayers for his fafety! or, if he had fallen by the chance of war, on the plains of Pharfalia, in the defence of his country's liberty, he had died still glorious, though unfortunate; but, as if he had been referved for an example of the instability of human greatness, he, who a few days before commanded kings and confuls, and all the noblest of Rome, was fentenced to die by a council of slaves; murdered by a base deferter; cast out naked and headless on the Egyptian strand; and when the whole earth, as Velleius says, had scarce been fufficient for his victories, could not find a spot upon it at last for a grave. His body was burnt on the shore by one of his freed-men, with the planks of an old fishing-boat; and his ashes, being conveyed to Rome, were depofited privately, by his wife Cornelia, in a vault by his alban villa. The Egyptians however raised a monument to him on the place, and adorned it with figures of brass, which being defaced afterwards by time, and buried almost in sand and rubbish, was fought out, and restored by the emperor Hadrian. cipline, a perpetual modesty, temperance, and gravity of outward behaviour; yet in the licence of camps the example was more rare and striking. His perfon was extremely graceful, and imprinting respect; yet with an air of reserved haughtiness, which became the general better than the citizen. His parts were plau. fible, rather than great; specious, rather than penetrating; and his views of politics but narrow; for his chief inftrument of governing was dissimulation; yet he had not always the art to conceal his real sentiments. As he was a better foldier than a statesman, so what he gained in the camp he usually lost in the city; and though adored when abroad, was often affronted and mortified at home, till the imprudent opposition of the senate drove him to that alliance with Craffus and Cæfar, which proved fatal both to himself and the republic. He took in these two, not as the partners, but the ministers rather of his power; that by giving them some share with him, he might make his own authority uncontrollable: he had no reason to apprehend that they could ever prove his rivals; fince neither of them had any credit or character of that kind, which alone could raise them above the laws; a superior fame and experience in war, with the militia of the empire at their devotion: all this was purely his own; till, by cherishing Cæfar, and throw ing into his hands the only thing which he wanted, arms, and military command, he made him at last too strong for himself, and never began to fear him till it was too late. Cicero warmly diffuaded both his union and his breach with Cæfar; and after the rupture, as warmly still, the thought of giving him battle: if any of these counsels had been followed, Pompey had preferved his life and honour, and the republic its liberty. But he was urged to his fate by a natural superstition, and attention to those vain auguries, with which he was flattered by all the Harufpices: he had seen the fame temper in Marius and Sylla, and observed the happy § 20. effects of it: but they assumed it only out of policy, he out of principle: they used it to animate their soldiers, when they had found a probable opportunity of fighting: but he, against all prudence and probability, was encouraged by it to fight to his own ruin. He saw his mistakes at last, when it was out of his power to correct them; and in his wretched flight from Middleton. Submiffion; Complaint; Intreating- May it please the imperial majesty of of |