tend to put him forth as a faultless
personage in history. He was much too human to be perfect. Those who
love the cold attitude of indifference may sing of Cato as perfect.
Cicero was ambitious, and often unscrupulous in his ambition. He was a
loving husband and a loving father; but at the end of his life he could
quarrel with his old wife irrecoverably, and could idolize his daughter,
while he ruined his son by indulgence. He was very great while he spoke
of his country, which he did so often; but he was almost as little when
he spoke of himself--which he did as often. In money-matters he was
honest--for the times in which he lived, wonderfully honest; but in
words he was not always equally trustworthy. He could flatter where he
did not love. I admit that it was so, though I will not admit without a
protest that the word insincere should be applied to him as describing
his character generally. He was so much more sincere than others that
the protest is needed. If a man stand but five feet eleven inches in his
shoes, shall he be called a pygmy? And yet to declare that he measures
full six feet would be untrue.

Cicero was a busybody. Were there anything to do, he wished to do it,
let it be what it might. "Cedant arma togae." If anything was written on
his heart, it was that. Yet he loved the idea of leading an army, and
panted for a military triumph. Letters and literary life were dear to
him, and yet he liked to think that he could live on equal terms with
the young bloods of Rome, such as C[oe]lius. As far as I can judge, he
cared nothing for luxurious eating and drinking, and yet he wished to be
reckoned among the gormands and gourmets of his times. He was so little
like the "budge doctors of the stoic fur," of whom it was his delight to
write when he had nothing else to do, that he could not bear any touch
of adversity with equanimity. The stoic requires to be hardened against
"the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." It is his profession to
be indifferent to the "whips and scorns of time." No man was less
hardened, or more subject to suffering from scorns and whips. There be
those who think proneness to such suffering is unmanly, or that the
sufferer should at any rate hide his agony. Cicero did not. Whether of
his glory or of his shame, whether of his joy or of his sorrow, whether
of his love or of his hatred, whether of his hopes or of his despair, he
spoke openly, as he did of all things. It has not been th