al hardly with him, and call him a coward.
"With an incredible pusillanimity," says M. Du Rozoir, "Cicero excused
himself, alleging his health and the fatigue of his voyage." "He
pretended that he was too tired to be present," says Mr Long. It appears
to me that they who have read Cicero's works with the greatest care have
become so enveloped by the power of his words as to expect from them an
unnatural weight. If a politician of to-day, finding that it did not
suit him to appear in the House of Commons on a certain evening, and
that it would best become him to allow a debate to pass without his
presence, were to make such an excuse, would he be treated after the
same fashion? Pusillanimity, and pretence, in regard to those Philippics
in which he seems to have courted death by every harsh word that he
uttered! The reader who has begun to think so must change his mind, and
be prepared, as he progresses, to find quite another fault with Cicero.
Impetuous, self-confident, rash; throwing down the gage with internecine
fury; striving to crush with his words the man who had the command of
the legions of Rome; sticking at nothing which could inflict a blow;
forcing men by his descriptions to such contempt of Antony that they
should be induced to leave the stronger party, lest they too should
incur something of the wrath of the orator--that they will find to be
the line which Cicero adopted, and the demeanor he put on during the
next twelve months! He thundered with his Philippics through Rome,
addressing now the Senate and now the people with a hardihood which you
may condemn as being unbecoming one so old, who should have been taught
equanimity by experience; but pusillanimity and pretence will not be the
offences you will bring against him.

Antony, not finding that Cicero had come at his call, declared in the
Senate that he would send his workmen to dig him out from his house.
Cicero alludes to this on the next day without passion.[196] Antony was
not present, and in this speech he expresses no bitterness of anger. It
should hardly have been named one of the Philippics, which title might
well have been commenced with the second. The name, it should be
understood, has been adopted from a jocular allusion by Cicero to the
Philippics of Demosthenes, made in a letter to Brutus. We have at least
the reply of Brutus, if indeed the letter be genuine, which is much to
be doubted.[197] But he had no purpose of affixing his name to th