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MIDDLETON.

Dr. CONFERS MIDDLETON wurde 1683 zu Richmond in Yorkshire geboren, und von seinem begüterten Vater mit vieler Sorgfalt erzogen. Im 17ten Jahre seines Alters ging er nach Cambridge, wo er 1707 Magister, und 1717 Doktor der Theologie und erster Universitätsbibliothekar ward. 1724 reisete er, theils um seine Gesundheit zu stärken, theils um seinen Hang nach antiquarischen Kenntnissen zu befriedigen, nach Italien, kehrte aber schon 1725 nach England zurück, weil der grofse Aufwand, den er zur Ehre seiner Nation zu Rom machen zu müssen glaubte, seine Vermögensumstände zerrüttet hatte. Sein Leben war eine Kette literarischer Fehden, und nicht leicht hat ein Gelehrter mehr Pamphlets geschrieben und veranlafst, als er. Er starb 1752 zu Cambridge an einem schleichenden Fieber. Sein Hauptwerk, the History of the life of M. T. Cicero, erschien zuerst London, 1741. 2 Vols. 4; nachgedruckt zu Basel, 1790. 4 Vols. 8. Unstreitig nimmt Middleton eine der ersten Stellen unter den Biographen ein, ob man ihn gleich nicht ohne Grund beschuldigt, dafs er in der Übersetzung der Ciceronianischen Briefe unglücklich gewesen ist, auch seinem Stil nicht Korrektheit und Präcision zu geben gewusst hat*). Die vorzüglichsten seiner übrigen, gröfstentheils theologischen und antiquarischen Schriften enthält folgende Sammlung: Miscellaneous Works of the late reverend and learned Conyers Middleton, D. D. principal Librarian of the University of Cambridge, London 4 Vols. 4. Nachstehende zwei verdienen darunter besonders ausgezeichnet zu werden: A Letter from Rome, shewing an exact conformity between popery and paganism, or the religion of the present Romans derived from that of their heathen ancestors, zuerst London, 1729. 4. Geometry no friend to infidelity, or a defence of Sir Isaac Newton and the British Mathematicians, by Philalethes Cantabrigiensis, zuerst London, 1734. 8. Dem Forscher der Alterthümer sind wichtig: Antiquitates Middletonianæ, sive ger

*) Nach Einigen soll Middleton bei der Ausarbeitung seines Werks aus einem ziemlich unbekannten Buche, betitelt: G. Bellendeni Scoti, de tribus luminibus Romanorum libri XVI. Paris 1634. fol. viel geschöpft ́haben.

mana quædam antiquitatis eruditæ monumenta, quibus Romanorum veterum ritus varii, tam sacri quam profani illustrantur, London 1754. 4. Seine Streitigkeiten mit dem Dr. Bentley, der ihn wegen seiner Liebe zur Musik den Fiedler nannte, veranlassten folgende Broschüre: Remarks paragraph by paragraph upon the proposal lately publish'd by Richard Bentley, for a new edition of the greek Testament and latin version, London 1721. 4., wodurch sein gelehrter Gegner, zum Bedauern aller Liebhaber ächter Bibelkritik, veranlafst ward, sein Vorhaben, eine kritische Ausgabe des neuen Testaments zu liefern, aufzugeben.

CHARACTER OF M. T. CICERO *).

The story of Cicero's death continued fresh on the minds

of the Romans for many ages after it, and was delivered down to posterity with all its circumstances, as one of the most affecting and memorable events of their history: so that the spot, on which it happened, seems to have been visited by travellers with a kind of religious reverence. The odium of it fell chiefly on Antony; yet it left a stain of perfidy and ingratitude also on Augustus; which explains the reason of that silence, which is observed about him, by the writers of that age: and why his name is not so much as mentioned either by Horace or Virgil. For though his character would have furnished a glorious subject for many noble lines, yet it was no subject for court-Poets since the very mention of him must have been a satire on the Prince; especially while Antony lived; among the Sycophants of whose court it was fashionable to insult his memory by all the methods of calumny that wit and malice could invent: nay Virgil, on an occasion, that could hardly fail of bringing him to his mind, instead of doing justice to his merit, chose to do an injustice rather to Rome itself, by yielding the superiority of eloquence to the Greeks, which they themselves had been forced to yield to Cicero**),

*) History of the life of M. T. Cicero, Sect. XII. **) Vermuthlich meint Middleton die Stelle Aeneis lib. VI. 846-850, nach der Uebersetzung von Fofs:

Andere giessen vielleicht geründeter athmende Erze

Oder entziehen, ich glaub' es, besceltere Bildung dem Marmor;

Livy, however, whose candor made Augustus call him a Pompeian, while out of complaisance to the times he seems to extenuate the crime of Cicero's murder, yet after a bigh encomium of his virtues, declares, that to praise him as he deserved, required the eloquence of Cicero himself. Augustus too, as Plutarch tells us, happening one day to catch his grandson reading one of Cicero's books, which, for fear of the Emperor's displeasure, the boy endeavoured to hide under his gown, took the book into his hands, and turning over a great part of it, gave it back again, and said: this was à learned man, my child, and a lover of his country.

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In the succeeding generation, as the particular envy to Cicero subsided, by the death of those whom private interests and personal quarrels had engaged to hate him when living, and defame him when dead, so his name and memory began to shine out in its proper lustre; and in the reign even of Tiberius, when an eminent senator and historian, Cremutius Cordus, was condemned to die for praising Brutus, yet Paterculus could not forbear breaking out into the following warm expostulation with Antony, on the subject of Cicero's death:*),,Thou hast done nothing Antony; hast done nothing, ,,I say, by setting a price on that divine and illustrious head, ,, and by a detestable reward, procuring the death of so great ,, a Consul and preserver of the republic. Thou hast snatched from Cicero a troublesome being; a declining age: a life more miserable under thy dominion, than death itself; but ,,so far from diminishing the glory of his deeds and sayings, thou hast increased it: He lives and will live in the me,,mory of all ages; and as long as this system of nature, whether by chance or providence or what way soever ,,formed, which he alone, of all the Romans, comprehended in „his mind, and illustrated hy his eloquence**), shall remain entire, it will draw the praises of Cicero along with it; and ,, all posterity will admire his writings against thee, curse thy act against him."

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Besser kämpft vor dem Richter ihr Wort, und die Bahnen des Himmels Zeichnet genauer ihr Stab, und verkündiget Sternen den Aufgang: Du, o Römer, beherrsche des Erdreichs Völker mit Obmacht.

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*) Hist. Rom. II. 66. **) Wahrscheinlich ist die Stelle Cicero de Natura Deorum II. 37 seq., welche erhabene Begriffe über das Weltall enthält, gemeint.

From this period, all the Roman writers, whether poets or historians, seem to vie with each other in celebrating the praises of Cicero, as the most illustrious of all their patriots, and the parent of the Roman wit and eloquence; who had done more honour to his country by his writings than all their conquerors by their arms, and extended the bounds of his learning beyond those of their empire. So that their very emperors, near three centuries after his death, began to reverence him in the class of their inferior deities; a rank, which he would have preserved to this day, if he had happened to live in papal Rome, where he could not have failed, as Erasmus says, from the innocence of his life, of obtaining the honour and title of a saint.

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As to his person, he was tall and slender with a neck particularly long; yet his features were regular and manly; preserving a comliness and dignity to the last, with a certain air of chearfulness and serenity, that imprinted both affection and respect. His constitution was naturally weak, yet was so confirmed by his management of it, as to enable him to support all the fatigues of the most active, as well as the most studious life, with perpetual health and vigor. The care that he employed upon his body, consisted chiefly in bathing and rubbing, with a few turns every day in his gardens for the refreshment of his voice from the labour of the bar: yet

in the summer, he generally gave himself the exercise of a journey, to visit his several estates and villas in different parts of Italy. But his principal instrument of health, was diet and temperance: by these he preserved himself from all violent distempers; and when he happened to be attacked by any slight indisposition, used to enforce the severity of his abstinence, and starve it presently by fasting.

In his clothes and dress, which the wise have usually considered as an index of the mind, he observed what he prescribes in his book of offices, a modesty and decency, adapted to his rank and character: a perpetual cleanliness, without the appearance of pains; free from the affectation of singularity; and avoiding the extremes of a rustic negligence and foppish delicacy, both of which are equally contrary to true dignity: the one implying an ignorance, or illiberal contempt of it; the other a childish pride and ostentation of proclaiming our pretensions to it.

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In his domestic aud social life, his behaviour was very amiable; he was a most indulgent parent, a sincere and zealous friend, a kind and generous master. His letters are full of the tenderest expressions of his love for his children, in whose endearing conversation, as he often tells us, he used to drop all his cares, and relieve himself from all his struggles in the senate and the forum. The same affection, in an inferior degree, was extended also to his slaves, when by their fidelity and services they had recommended themselves to favor. We have seen a remarkable instance of it in Tiro; whose case was no otherwise different from the rest, than as it was distinguished by the superiority of his merit. In one of his letters to Atticus, I have nothing more, says he, to write; and my mind indeed is something ruffled at present, for Socitheus, my reader, is dead, a hopeful youth: which has afflicted me more than one would imagine the death of a slave ought to do.

He entertained very high notions of friendship, and of its excellent use and benefit to human life; which he has beautifully illustrated in his entertaining treatise on that subject; where he lays down no other rules, than what he exemplified by his practice. For in all the variety of friendships, in which his eminent rank engaged him, he was never charged with deceiving, deserting, or even slighting any one, whom he had once called his friend, or esteemed an honest man. It was his delight to advance their prosperity, to relieve their adversity; the same friend in both fortunes; but more zealous only in the bad, where his help was the most wanted, and his services the most disinterested; looking upon it not as a friendship, but a sordid traffic and merchandize of benefits, where good offices are to be weighed by a nice estimate of gain and loss. He calls gratitude the mother of virtue; reckons it the most capital of all duties; and uses the words, grateful and good, as terms synonymous, and inseparably united in the same character. His writings abound with sentiments of this sort, as his life did with examples of them; so that one of his friends, in apologizing for the importunity of a request, observes to him with great truth, that the tenor of his life would be a sufficient excuse for it; since he had established such a custom, of doing every thing for his friends, that they no longer requested, but claimed a right to command him.

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