must be worth while to learn the truth about it.

"Oh that mine adversary had written a book!" Who does not understand
the truth of these words! It is always out of a man's mouth that you
may most surely condemn him. Cicero wrote many books, and all about
himself. He has been honored very highly. Middleton, in the preface to
his own biography, which, with all its charms, has become a by-word
for eulogy; quotes the opinion of Erasmus, who tells us that he loves
the writings of the man "not only for the divine felicity of his
style, but for the sanctity of his heart and morals." This was the
effect left on the mind of an accurate thinker and most just man. But
then also has Cicero been spoken of with the bitterest scorn. From Dio
Cassius, who wrote two hundred and twenty years after Christ, down to
Mr. Froude, whose Caesar has just been published, he has had such hard
things said of him by men who have judged him out of his own mouth,
that the reader does not know how to reconcile what he now reads with
the opinion of men of letters who lived and wrote in the century next
after his death--with the testimony of such a man as Erasmus, and with
the hearty praises of his biographer, Middleton. The sanctity of his
heart and morals! It was thus that Erasmus was struck in reading his
works. It is a feeling of that kind, I profess, that has induced me to
take this work in hand--a feeling produced altogether by the study of
his own words. It has seemed to be that he has loved men so well, has
been so anxious for the true, has been so capable of honesty when
dishonesty was common among all around him, has been so jealous in the
cause of good government, has been so hopeful when there has been but
little ground for hope, as to have deserved a reputation for sanctity
of heart and morals.

Of the speeches made by Cicero as advocate after his Quaestorship, and