D. OCTAVIUS CAESAR AUGUSTUS.

was present in the senate during the debate respecting the punishment of the Catilinian conspirators; his detail of which is agreeable to the characters of the several speakers: but in detracting, by invidious silence, or too faint representation, from the merits of Cicero on that important occasion, he exhibits a glaring instance of the partiality which too often debases the narratives of those who record the transactions of their own time. He had married Terentia, the divorced wife of Cicero; and there subsisted between the two husbands a kind of rivalship from that cause, to which was probably added some degree of animosity, on account of their difference in politics, during the late dictatorship of Julius Caesar, by whom Sallust was restored to the senate, whence he had been expelled for licentiousness, and was appointed governor of Numidia. Excepting the injustice with which Sallust treats Cicero, he is entitled to high commendation. In both his remaining works, the Conspiracy of Catiline, and the War of Jugurtha, there is a peculiar air of philosophical sentiment, which, joined to the elegant conciseness of style, and animated description of characters, gives to his writings a degree of interest, superior to that which is excited in any preceding work of the historical kind. In the occasional use of obsolete words, and in laboured exordiums to both his histories, he is liable to the charge of affectation; but it is an affectation of language which supports solemnity without exciting disgust; and of sentiment which not only exalts human nature, but animates to virtuous exertions. It seems to be the desire of Sallust to atone for the dissipation of his youth by a total change of conduct; and whoever peruses his exordiums with the attention which they deserve, must feel a strong persuasion of the justness of his remarks, if not the incentives of a resolution to be governed