He himself believed in their value, and took measures for their
protection; and those who lived in his own time, and in the
immediately succeeding ages, entertained the same belief and took the
same care. Livy said that, to write Latin well, the writer should
write it like Cicero; and Quintilian, the first of Latin critics,
repeated to us what Livy had asserted.[27] There is a sweetness of
language about Cicero which runs into the very sound; so that passages
read aright would, by their very cadences, charm the ear of listeners
ignorant of the language. Eulogy never was so happy as his. Eulogy,
however, is tasteless in comparison with invective. Cicero's abuse is
awful. Let the reader curious in such matters turn to the diatribes
against Vatinius, one of Caesar's creatures, and to that against the
unfortunate Proconsul Piso; or to his attacks on Gabinius, who was
Consul together with Piso in the year of Cicero's banishment. There
are wonderful morsels in the philippics dealing with Antony's private
character; but the words which he uses against Gabinius and Piso beat
all that I know elsewhere in the science of invective. Junius could
not approach him; and even Macaulay, though he has, in certain
passages, been very bitter, has not allowed himself the latitude which
Roman taste and Roman manners permitted to Cicero.

It may, however, be said that the need of biographical memoirs as to a
man of letters is by no means in proportion to the excellence of
the work that he has achieved. Alexander is known but little to us,
because we know so little of the details of his life. Caesar is much
to us, because we have in truth been made acquainted with him. But
Shakspeare, of whose absolute doings we know almost nothing, would
not be nearer or dearer had he even had a Boswell to paint his daily
portrait. The man of letters is, in truth, ever writing his own
biography. What there is in his mind is being declared to the world at