Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/784

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fore Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, and won his case. In 1730 Mrs Oldfisld died, and her loss was followed in 1731 by that of Wilks; Gibber, who had been named laureate on the death of Eusden, sold his share in the theatre, and retired from the stage, and only appeared thereafter on rare occasions. In 1742 occurred the quarrel with Pope, which resulted in the exclusion of Theobald and the elevation of Gibber as the hero of the Dnnciad. At seventy-four he appeared on the stage for the. last time as Panulph in his own poor tragedy of Papal Tyranny. His conversation (of which Johnson said that "taking from it all that he ought not to have said, he was a poor creature") was agreeable to the last, and he died as full of worldly honours as of

years.

Cibber s reputation has suffered greatly from the acrid censure of Pope and the rough scorn of Johnson. There can be no doubt that he was by no means an unamiable character, and that he was deficient neither in wit, sense, tact, nor feeling. The little passages of dramatic criticism and reflection scattered through his Apology, while they prove his extreme perspicuity and excellence of experi ence, are perhaps the most delicate and subtle of their kind in the literature of his time ; while the fact that his version of Richard III. should have kept the stage for a century is of itself no mean proof that his scenic sagacity and instinct were remarkable. As a dramatist, he has neither the broad humour and strong comic vein of Vanbrugh, nor the fine English and the masterfulness of Congreve, nor the frolicsome gaiety and airy fancy of Farquhar. His characters are flat; his plots are neither natural nor well conducted; his dialogue is often flippant. He attempted, moreover, to extract a highly moral end from his sympathetic studies of social weakness and impurity, and the result (par ticularly in his continuation of Vanbrugh s unfinished Jour ney to London} is not happy. His Odes, the subject of several of Johnson s keenest pleasantries, are wretched. His best work is the Apology for his Life, a book which the same critic declared to be a standing proof that any man might do well who was able and willing to keep to his own ground.


See An Apology for the Life of Colley Gibber, Comedian (London, 1822) ; Cibber, Dramatic Works (London, 1777, 6 vols.) ; Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. ; and Isaac D Israeli, Quarrels of A uthors.

CICACOLE, a town of British India, in the presidency of Madras and district of Ganjam, about 58 miles N.E. of the town of Vizagapatam, on the left bank of the River Nagawalli or Naglandi, a few miles from its mouth. It is an irregular mud-built place, but possesses several mosques and bazaars of some importance. Its principal manu factures are cotton goods and excellent muslins. There is a military cantonment a short distance from the now dismantled fort, and a small English church occupies the corner of the parade ground. A school where English is taught is supported by the London Missionary Society. The town formerly gave its name to one of the five Northern Circars. Its population is about 12,800.

CICERO, Marcus Tullius, bora at Arpinum (Arpino) on the northern border of the Volscian territory, 3d January 647 A.U.C., 106 B.C. His family was of equestrian rank, and his father, though living in retirement, was intimate with some of the public men of the day. The orator Crassus took an early interest in the young M. Cicero and his brother Quintus, and directed their education. As an orator, a statesman, and a man of letters Marcus became the most consummate specimen of the Roman character under the influence of Hellenic culture. He was first placed under the tuition of the Greek poet Archias, a teacher at Rome, with whom he read the poets and orators of Greece, com posed in the Greek language, and also wrote Latin verse. This literary training he combined with study under the two Scsevolas, the augur and the pontifex, and from these Roman masters he imbibed the spirit of the national law and ritual. His aim was to prepare himself by liberal as well as technical training for the career of an advocate; but the Roman institutions required him to serve in the field also, and he took part in the campaign of Sulla against the Italian confederates in the year 87. Returning to the city he betook himself once more to the pursuits most con genial to him, and attended on the teaching of Philo the chief of the Academics, of Diodotus the Stoic, and of Molo a philosopher of Rhodes. Many teachers had been driven at that moment from the schools of Greece by the invasion of Mithridates. Cicero, at the age of twenty-six, pleaded a civil cause in the speech pro Quinctio (81 B.C.), and again in a criminal action against Roscius Amerinus in the following year. After these efforts, which brought him some distinction, he suddenly withdrew to Athens, on the plea of weak health, but probably to avoid the displeasure of the dictator Sulla. Here he studied under Molo and others, with a special view to the practice of declamation, and the management of his physical powers in a profession which made severe demands upon them. He travelled also through the Roman province of Asia, and stored up a vast amount of information in a mind singularly acquisitive and endowed with extraordinary facility of arrangement and expression, but with comparatively little fertility of invention or breadth and strength of character. Cicero was from the first an imitator and an adapter rather than an original thinker He was throughout a follower rather than a leader in action as well as in speculation. His mental training disposed him specially to admire past models or cling to existing institutions, and he was always too easily subjected to the influence of characters stronger than his own. His position, indeed, as a new man, or a strug gling candidate for political honours which neither his birth nor his means could naturally command, made it necessary for him to attach himself to the leaders of party ; but his versatile talents soon rendered him a valuable adherent, and it speaks well for the times in which his lot was cast, amidst the deep corruption which pervaded them, that his honest and enlightened patriotism was on the whole appreciated and rewarded.

It was from policy, but partly also from his own kindly

feelings, that the young orator, on resuming his profession, preferred to distinguish himself in defence rather than in attack. This course impressed the good-natured public in his favour. Moreover, the class from which the judices were taken, conscious that the position of defendants in a criminal suit might at any time be its own, was often glad of an excuse for screening public delinquents. It may be said that even the impeachment of Verres was rather a defence of the injured Sicilians than a hostile attack upon an individual, who was allowed to withdraw quietly from the city. Cicero s triumph in this famous cause (70 B.C.) raised him to the pinnacle of reputation. He had already attained the qusestorship (77 B.C.). He succeeded to the sedileship in 69, and became praetor in 68, a year memor able in his career for the passing of the Manilian law, which he warmly supported, by which Pompeius was constituted commander against Mithridates with extraordinary powers, in the place of Lucullus. Pompeius was at this period accepted by the oligarchy as their leader, though not with out reluctance and distrust. Cicero gladly attached himself to their cause, and flattered himself with the hope of recon ciling the senate with the knights by a more liberal and genial policy. Meanwhile he hoped, by favour of the dominant party, to attain the consulship. He found him self a candidate for that magistracy along with Catiline, a man of ruined character and already under suspicion of

plotting against the state. Nevertheless he did not hesitate