Contents - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University of Auckland

adicalisation of political opinion in Britain in the early 1790s. The topic was a controversial one,given the government’s failure to address the needs of the increasingly influential and well-educatedDissident faction and other, more radical, elements were quick to respond to Burke’s notions of a justsociety. In France, in November 1792, the revolutionaries found themselves in conflict as theyattempted to define the virtues of their new republic. Factions formed along lines that reproduced thedifferences between ancient Sparta and ancient Athens. Others like Brissot, upheld ancient Romanmodels and a ‘cult of antiquity’ developed with the heroes of the revolution identifying themselvesstrongly with the heroes of the past.Brissot, who had been Wordsworth’s original contact in Paris in 1791, was also known as the‘French Cicero’, and Parker traces his rise to power from his early days when he had hoped to becomefamous as a lawyer. In defining his aim of becoming an exceptional orator, Brissot had idealised theexample of Cicero:Cicero [he said] completely realised the portrait of [the] encyclopaedic orator. Philosopher,politician, poet, orator, lover of the beaux arts, Cicero was everything, shone in everything.Young orator, if this brilliant model does not inflame you, if you do not burn with the nobledesire to follow him, all is up with you; you will never be more than a mediocre lawyer. 6Brissot had hoped, like Cicero, to bring to the bar ‘a knowledge of literature and a taste for thesciences’. 7 In reality he found himself frustrated by the length of his apprenticeship and by regulationsthat made the realisation of his vision impossible. Instead he carefully re-read Cicero’s De Oratore,and selected key passages of Cicero’s text to imagine a vision of Roman society where his wish for acareer would have been gratified. This work Un indépendant à l'ordre des avocats (1782) proposedthat in Cicero’s day Brissot would have been free to pursue a career that allowed him to engage in freespeech on all manner of topics. He would have had the freedom to speak not only at the bar but also tothe people, the politicians, and the lawmakers and to rise by virtue of merit even to the position ofconsul like Cicero, the first man in the state. 8 Brissot’s vision of the possibilities open to ‘a manspeaking to men’ with eloquence would not have been lost on Wordsworth. 9 Quite possibly, Brissot’sdetailed exposition of De Oratore had inspired Wordsworth to study that work when he had theleisure to do so after his return to England.In November 1792, Brissot’s republican ideals were encountering their severest challenge yetas Robespierre and Saint-Just called for the death penalty for the king. The Girondins preferred thathe should first be brought to the bar to face justice before a court. The king’s death was probablyinevitable either way, though exile might have been an option. But the important question of themoment was how ‘justice’ was to be decided. Wordsworth records the split between the ‘indecision’of the Girondins, ‘whose aim seemed best’ (X 113-4), and the ‘impiety’ of those who chose ‘thestraightforward path’. He represents his own views as confused, but he also admits to beingcompletely caught up in the events of the moment. He states that, had he felt himself capable, he6 Brissot, Le sang innocent vengé, p. 193. Parker, p. 49.7 Brissot, Un indépendant à l'ordre des avocats (1782) p. 345. Parker, p. 49.8 Parker, pp. 50-51.9 Christopher Wordsworth records his brother’s connection with the Brissotins in his Memoirs I. 76-7.164