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Updated: May 31, 2025
The former takes longer walks than usual, breaks out in philippics against tyrannies of all kinds, and swears ten times a day that the French are the most noisy people upon earth the latter is vexed, and, for that reason, fancies she is ill, and calculates, with great ingenuity, all the hazard and inconvenience we may be liable to by remaining here.
So much for the poetry of our many-handed poet. As to his house decorations, his illuminated manuscripts, his “anti-scrape” philippics, his sage-greens, his tapestries, his socialism, and his samplers: to deal with the infinite is far beyond the scope of an article so very finite as this, or we could easily show that in them all there is seen the same naïf genius of the poet, the same rare instinct for beautiful expression, the same originality as in the epics and the translations.
The indelicate and scandalous attacks, in 1796 and 1797, against Lord Malmesbury, in the then official journal, Le Redacteur, were the offspring of his malignity and pen; and the philippics and abusive notes in our present official Moniteur, against your Government and country, are frequently his patriotic progeny, or rather, he often shares with Talleyrand and Hauterive their paternity.
In these famous philippics, he fearlessly exposed the peculations, the misrule, the oppression, and the inhuman heartlessness of the Company's servants, speeches which extorted admiration, while they humiliated and chastised.
So warm were the discussions that arose that the meetings sometimes lasted for entire days, and conversions were not unusual. It was in one of these neighborhood gatherings that the writer first became an active Anti-Slavery worker. He had memorized one of Daniel O'Connell's philippics against American slavery, and, being given the opportunity, declaimed it with much earnestness.
In passing it is well to note that all the tales as to the dissipation and profligacy of Mark Antony in his early days come from the "Philippics" of Cicero, who made the mistake of executing Lentulus, the step-father of Mark Antony, and then felt called upon forever after to condemn the entire family. "Philippics" are always a form of self-vindication.
A fifth, whom one might take for a Quaker, asserts that the march of Enlightenment is a crusade for universal philanthropy, vegetable diet, and the perpetuation of peace by means of speeches, which certainly do produce a very contrary effect from the Philippics of Demosthenes! The sixth good fellow without a rag on his back does not care a straw where the march goes.
It has been the habit of some latter writers, who have left to Cicero his literary honors, to rob him of those which had been accorded to him as a politician. Macaulay, expressing his surprise at the fecundity of Cicero, and then passing on to the praise of the Philippics as senatorial speeches, says of him that he seems to have been at the head of the "minds of the second order."
We can understand that Cicero's name should have been the first on the list. We are told that when the news reached Rome the whole city was struck with horror. During the speaking of the Philippics the Republican party had been strong and Cicero had been held in favor.
The fourteen Philippics add little to his reputation as an orator, and still less to his credit as a statesman. The old watchwords are there, but their unreality is now more obvious; the old rhetorical skill, but more coarsely and less effectively used. The last Philippic was delivered to advocate a public thanksgiving for the victory gained over Antonius by the consuls, Hirtius and Pansa.
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