Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/240

 had Cicero constantly before him. "His warmest attachment, and increasing admiration," to quote the words of Dr Parr, "were necessarily attracted to the character whose writings were the object of his unremitting attention; whose expressions were as familiar to him as possible; and whose various and profound learning occupied all the faculties of his soul." He now commenced a still more extensive and laborious cento of the writings of the Roman orator, which he concluded in sixteen books, and which, with the addition of similar centoes of the writings of Seneca and Pliny the Elder, was to bear the name, "De Tribus Luminibus Romanorum." The Ciceronian cento, the only one he lived to complete, is justly considered a most extraordinary performance. By an exertion of fictitious machinery, akin to the modern historical romance, Cicero is introduced as if he had spoken or written the whole from beginning to end. The first seven books give a very concise abstract of the Roman history, from the foundation of the city, to the 647th year, in which he was born. Then he becomes more particular in the account of his own times, and enlarges very fully on all that happened after his first appearance in public business. He gives an account of the most remarkable of his orations and epistles, and the occasions on which they were written, as also of such of his philosophical works as have come .down to us, and of some other pieces that are now lost, ending with a letter he is supposed to have written to Octavianus, afterwards named Augustus, which letter, however, is supposed to be spurious. There cannot be a more complete history of the life of Cicero, or of the tumultuous times in which he lived, than this work, all of which, by an exquisite ingenuity, is so faithfully compiled from the known works of the orator, that probably there is not in the whole book a single expression, perhaps not a single word, which is not to be found in that great storehouse of philosophical eloquence. Nor is there any incoherence or awkwardness in this re-arrangement of Cicero's language; but, on the contrary, the matter flows as gracefully as in the original. "Whatever we find," says Parr, in the different writings of Cicero, elegantly expressed, or acutely conceived, Bellendenus has not only collected in one view, but elucidated in the clearest manner. He, therefore, who peruses this performance with the attention which it merits, will possess all the treasures of antiquity, all the energy of the mightiest examples. He will obtain an adequate knowledge of the Roman law, and system of jurisprudence, and may draw, as from an inexhaustible source, an abundance of expressions, the most exquisite in their kind." In the opinion of another critic, it is inconceivable that Bellenden could have composed this singular work, without having the whole of the writings of Cicero, and all the collateral authorities, in his mind at once, as it must have been quite impossible to perform such a task by turning over the leaves of the books, in order to find the different expressions suited to the various occasions where they were required.

After the death of Bellenden, the date of which is only known to have been posterior to 1625, the manuscript of his great work fell into the hands of one Toussaint du Bray, who printed it at Paris in 1631, or 1634, and dedicated it to King Charles I. of Great Britain. It is alleged that the principal part of the impression, about a thousand copies, was shipped for sale in Britain, and was lost on the passage, so that only a few copies survived. The work therefore fell at once into obscurity, and in a few years was scarcely known to exist. One copy having found its way to the Cambridge University Library, fell into the hands of Conyers Middleton, the keeper of that institution, who seems to have adopted the idea of making it the ground-work for a Life of Cicero under his own name. Hence has arisen one of the most monstrous instances of literary