gestures than distinctly heard his words, carried off the notion, (which
they were careful every where to disperse amongst the legions afterwards
associated with them in the same camps,) that Caesar had vowed never to lay
down his arms until he had obtained for every man, the very meanest of
those who heard him, the rank, privileges and appointments of a Roman
knight. Here was a piece of sovereign good luck. Had he really made such a
promise, Caesar might have found that he had laid himself under very
embarrassing obligations; but, as the case stood, he had, through all his
following campaigns, the total benefit of such a promise, and yet could
always absolve himself from the penalties of responsibility which it
imposed, by appealing to the evidence of those who happened to stand in
the first ranks of his audience. The blunder was gross and palpable; and
yet, with the unreflecting and dull-witted soldier, it did him service
greater than all the subtilties of all the schools could have
accomplished, and a service which subsisted to the end of the war.

Great as Caesar was by the benefit of his original nature, there can--be no
doubt that he, like others, owed something to circumstances; and perhaps,
amongst these which were most favorable to the premature development of
great self-dependence, we must reckon the early death of his father. It
is, or it is not, according to the nature of men, an advantage to be
orphaned at an early age. Perhaps utter orphanage is rarely or never such:
but to lose a father betimes profits a strong mind greatly. To Caesar it
was a prodigious benefit that he lost his father when not much more than
fifteen. Perhaps it was an advantage also to his father that he died thus
early. Had he stayed a year longer, he would have seen himself despised,
baffled, and made ridiculous. For where, let us ask, in any age, was the
father capable of adequately sustaining that relation to the unique Caius
Julius--to him, in the appropriate language of Shakspeare,