CICERO VIEWED AS A COLLECTOR.

Fuseli, in the introduction to the second part of his Lectures, has touched on the character of Cicero, respecting his knowledge and feeling of Art, in a manner which excites our curiosity.  “Though Cicero seems to have had as little native taste for painting and sculpture, and even less than he had taste for poetry, he had a conception of Nature, and with his usual acumen frequently scattered useful hints and pertinent observations.  For many of these he might probably be indebted to Hortensius, with whom, though his rival in eloquence, he lived on terms of familiarity, and who was a man of declared taste, and one of the first collectors of the time.”  We may trace the progress of Cicero’s taste for the works of art.  It was probably a late, though an ardent pursuit; and their actual enjoyment seems with this celebrated man rather to have been connected with some future plan of life.

Cicero, when about forty-three years of age, seems to have projected the formation of a library and a collection of antiquities, with the remote intention of secession, and one day stealing away from the noisy honours of the republic.  Although that great man remained too long a victim to his political ambition, yet at all times his natural dispositions would break out, and amidst his public avocations he often anticipated a time when life would be unvalued without uninterrupted repose; but repose, destitute of the ample furniture, and even of the luxuries of a mind occupying itself in literature and art, would only for him have opened the repose of a desert!  It was rather his provident wisdom than their actual enjoyment, which induced him, at a busied period of his life, to accumulate from all parts books, and statues, and curiosities without number; in a word, to become, according to the term, too often misapplied and misconceived among us, for it is not always understood in an honourable sense, a COLLECTOR!

Like other late collectors, Cicero often appears ardent to possess what he was not able to command; sometimes he entreats, or circuitously negotiates, or is planning the future means to secure the acquisitions which he thirsted after.  He is repeatedly soliciting his literary friend Atticus to keep his books for him, and not to dispose of his collections on any terms, however earnestly the bidders may crowd; and, to keep his patience in good hope (for Atticus imagined his collection would exceed the price which Cicero could afford), he desires Atticus not to despair of his being able to make them his, for that he was saving all his rents to purchase these books for the relief of his old age.