t that Caesar has passed on in a good-humor, and
has left behind him glad tidings, such as should ever brighten the feet
of the conqueror.

It is singular that, with a correspondence such as that of Cicero's, of
which, at least through the latter two or three years of his life, every
letter of his to his chief friend has been preserved, there should have
been nothing left to us from that friend himself. It must have been the
case, as Middleton suggests, that Atticus, when Cicero was dead, had the
handling of the entire MS., and had withdrawn his own; either that, or
else Cicero and Atticus mutually agreed to the destruction of their
joint labors, and Atticus had been untrue to his agreement, knowing
well the value of the documents he preserved. That there is no letter
from a woman--not even a line to Cicero from his dear daughter--is much
to be regretted. And yet there are letters--many from Caelius, who is
thus brought forward as almost a second and a younger Atticus--and from
various Romans of the day. When we come to the latter days of his life,
in which he had taken upon himself the task of writing to Plancus and
others as to their supposed duty to the State, they become numerous.
There are ten such from Plancus, and nine from Decimus Brutus; and there
is a whole mass of correspondence with Marcus Brutus--to be taken for
what it is worth. With a view to history, they are doubtless worth much;
but as throwing light on Cicero's character, except as to the vigor that
was in the man to the last, they are not of great value. How is it that
a correspondence, which is for its main purpose so full, should have
fallen so short in many of its details? There is no word, no allusion
derogatory to Atticus in these letters, which have come to us from
Caelius and others. We have Atticus left to us for our judgment, free
from the confession of his own faults, and free also from the
insinuations of others. Of whom would we wish that the familiar letters
of another about ourselves should be published? Would those
objectionable epithets as to Pompey have been allowed to hold their
ground had Pompey lived and had they been in his possession?

But, in reading histories and biographies, we always accept with a bias
in favor of the person described the anecdotes of those who talk of
them. We know that the ready wit of the surrounding world has taken up
these affairs of the moment and turned them into ridicule--then as they
do now. We dis