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But he was timid; and after having been a constitutional royalist before the 10th of August, a moderate republican prior to the 31st of May, he became the panegyrist and the co- operator of the decemviral tyranny. This shows that, in a revolution, no one should become an actor without decision of character.
He died shrieking "My God! how I suffer! Not all the devils and all the damned together endure what I endure!" His panegyrist, in whose book we find all the horrible details of his death employed to much purpose to illustrate the advantages of belonging to the true faith, remarks "Truly big generous heart must have been a hot hell for those fiends who entered his body to torment it."
When people praised him to his face on the diversity of his knowledge, our colleague did not immediately repel the compliment; but soon after, he would stop his panegyrist, and whisper in his ear with an air of mystery: "I will confide a secret to you, pray do not take advantage of it: I am only a very little less ignorant than another man."
"Beauty," remarks a philosophic panegyrist of physical perfection, "extends its prestige to posterity itself, and attaches a charm for centuries to the name alone of the privileged creatures upon whom it has pleased heaven to bestow it." Beauty has also its epochs. It does not belong to all men and to all ages to enjoy it in its exquisite perfection. As there are fashions which spoil it, so there are periods which affect its sentiment. For instance, it belonged to the eighteenth century to invent pretty women charming dolls all powder, patches, and perfume, affecting the attractions which they did not possess under their vast hoops and great furbelows. Let us venture to say that the foundation of true beauty, as of true virtue, as of true genius, is strength. Shed over this strength the vivifying rays of elegance, grace, delicacy, and you have beauty. Its perfect type is the Venus of Milo, or again, that pure and mysterious apparition, goddess or mortal, which is called Psyche, or the Venus of Naples. Beauty is certainly to be seen in the Venus de' Medici, but in that type we feel that it is declining, or about to decline. Look at, not the women of Titian, but the virgins of Raphael and Leonardo: the face is of infinite delicacy, but the body evinces strength. These forms ought to disgust one for ever with the shadows and monkeys
Whigs have detested him as the destroyer of his party. One undiscriminating panegyrist calls him the most profound and comprehensive of political philosophers that has yet existed in the world. Another and more distinguished writer insists that he is a resplendent and far-seeing rhetorician, rather than a deep and subtle thinker.
Manlius could not repress a smile at the singular situation of the panegyrist. "Oho, Ævius, how long has the Cæsar had you carried about in a lectica like an aristocratic courtesan?" "Be merciful, Manlius, and do not jeer at me. I am the most miserable writer of verse since Pegasus became the steed of poets. Just think what a favorable opportunity presented itself to secure immortality.
It is true, that on account of the disappointment which he occasioned by his contrast to his warlike father, he mingled in some tournaments in Brussels, where he was matched against Count Mansfeld, one of the most distinguished chieftains of the age, and where, says his professed panegyrist, "he broke his lances very mach to the satisfaction of his father and aunts."
The historian Cabrera, official panegyrist of Philip the Second, speaks of the death of Carlos as a natural one, but leaves a dark kind of mystery about the symptoms of his disease.
Among the sufferers was Carlos de Sessa, a young noble of distinguished character and abilities, who said to the King as he passed by the throne to the stake, "How can you thus look on and permit me to be burned?" Philip then made the memorable reply, carefully recorded by his historiographer and panegyrist; "I would carry the wood to burn my own son withal, were he as wicked as you."
A warm admirer of the Doctor's, speaking of Claremont, thus expresses himself; 'It will survive, says he, the noble structure it celebrates, 'and will remain a perpetual monument of its author's learning, taste, and great capacity as a poet; since, in that short work, there are innumerable beauties, and a vast variety of sentiments easily and happily interwoven; the most lively strokes of satire being intermixed with the most courtly panegyric, at the same time that there appears the true spirit of enthusiasm, which distinguishes the works of one born a poet, from those of a witty, or learned man, that has arrived at no higher art, than that of making verse . His knowledge in philosophy, his correct taste in criticism, and his thorough acquaintance in classical literature, with all the advantages that can be derived from an exact, but concealed method, an accurate, though flowing stile, and a language pure, natural, and full of vivacity, appear, says the same panegyrist in the preface he prefixed to a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, which would have been sufficient to have raised him an immortal reputation, if it had been the only product of his pen.
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