Note 3 — INTRODUCTION.
Reading edition
However Cæsar may be admired as an accomplished gentleman and scholar,—or even as a great and gallant soldier,—he ought ever to be reprobated as an usurper and a tyrant.—Dr. Adam Ferguson remarks, that “Julius Cæsar possessed the talent of influencing, of gaining, and employing men to his purpose, beyond any other person that is known in the history of the world: but it is surely not for the good of mankind,” continues this able writer, “that he should be admired in other respects. To admire even his clemency, is to mistake for it policy and cunning.” [See Ferguson’s Hist. of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic, vol. 5. ch. 36.]
Indeed our admiration of the great military talents of such a man as Cæsar, may carry us too far. Mr. Hume, in his History of England (ch. 47.) very justly observes—that “The unhappy prepossession which men commonly entertain in favour of ambition, courage, enterprise, and other warlike virtues, engages generous natures,—who always love fame,—into such pursuits as destroy their own peace, and that of the rest of mankind.”