Quintus had accompanied Caesar on his expedition into Britain as one of his lieutenants, and seems to have written home to his brother some notices of the country; to which the latter, towards the end of his reply, makes this allusion: "How delighted I was to get your letter from Britain! I had been afraid of the voyage across, afraid of the rock-bound coast of the island. The other dangers of such a campaign I do not mean to despise, but in these there is more to hope than to fear, and I have been rather anxiously expecting the result than in any real alarm about it. I see you have a capital subject to write about. What novel scenery, what natural curiosities and remarkable places, what strange tribes and strange customs, what a campaign, and what a commander you have to describe! I will willingly help you in the points you request, and I will send you the verses you ask for--though it is sending 'an owl to Athens',[1] I know". [Footnote 1: A Greek proverb, equivalent to our 'coals to Newcastle'.] In another letter he says, "Only give me Britain to paint with your colours and my own pencil". But either the Britons of those days did not, after all, seem to afford sufficient interest for poem or history, or for some other reason this joint literary undertaking, which seems once to have been contemplated, was never carried out, and we have missed what would beyond doubt have been a highly interesting volume of Sketches in Britain by the brothers Cicero. Quintus was a poet, as well as his brother--nay, a better poet, in the latter's estimation, or at least he was polite enough to say so more than once. In quantity, at least, if not in quality, the younger must have been a formidable rival, for he wrote, as appears from one of these letters, four tragedies in fifteen days--possibly translations only from the Greek.