But, through it all, there was a well-grounded conviction in his mind that Cicero, with all his virtues, was not practical.

Not that Cicero was to him the same as Cato, who with his Stoic grandiloquence must, to his thinking, have been altogether useless.

Cicero, though too virtuous for supreme rule, too virtuous to seize power and hold it, too virtuous to despise as effete the institutions of the Republic, was still a man so gifted, and capable in so many things, as to be very great as an assistant, if he would only condescend to assist.

It is in this light that Caesar seems to have regarded Cicero as time went on; admiring him, liking him, willing to act with him if it might be possible, but not the less determined to put down all the attempts at patriotic republican virtue in which the orator delighted to indulge.

Mr.Forsyth expresses an opinion that Caesar, till he crossed the Rubicon after his ten years' fighting in Gaul, had entertained no settled plan of overthrowing the Constitution.
Probably not; nor even then.