ible to speak too highly. I am
not prepared, indeed, to agree with the often quoted assertion of
Cornelius Nepos that he who has read his letters to Atticus will not
lack much of the history of those days.[137]

A man who should have read them and nothing else, even in the days of
Augustus, would not have learned much of the preceding age. But if not
for the purpose of history, the letters generally have, if read aright,
been all but enough for the purpose of biography. With a view to the
understanding of the man's character, they have, I think, been enough.
From them such a flood of light has been turned upon the writer that all
his nobility and all his defects, all his aspirations and all his
vacillations, have been made visible. We know how human he was, and how,
too, he was only human--how he sighed for great events, and allowed
himself to think sometimes that they could be accomplished by small
man[oe]uvres--how like a man he could be proud of his work and
boast--how like a man he could despair and almost die. But I wish it to
be acknowledged, by those who read his letters in order that they may
also read his character, that they were, when written, private letters,
intended to tell the truth, and that if they are to be believed in
reference to his weaknesses, they are also to be believed in reference
to his strength. If they are singularly transparent as to the
man--opening, especially to Atticus, the doors of his soul more
completely than would even any girl of the nineteenth century when
writing to her bosom friend--they must be taken as being more honestly
true. To regard the aspirations as hypocritical, and only the meaner
effusions of his mind as emblematic of the true man, is both
unreasonable and uncharitable. Nor, I think, will that reader grasp the
way to see the truth who cannot teach himself what has in Cicero's case,
been the effect of daring to tell to his friend an unvarnished tale.
When with us some poor thought does make its way across our minds, we do
not sit down and write it to another, nor, if we did, would an
immortality be awarded to the letter. If one of us were to lose his
all--as Cicero lost his all when he was sent into exile--I think it
might well be that he should for a time be unmanned; but he would either
not write, or, in writing, would hide much of his feelings. On losing
his Tullia, some father of to-day would keep it all in his heart, would
not maunder out his sorrows. Even with o