This oration, which Middleton declares to be superior to anything extant of the kind in all antiquity, and which a celebrated French critic terms, “Le discours le plus noble, le plus pathetique, et en meme tems le plus patriotique, que la reconnaissance, l’amitié, et la vertu, puissent inspirer à une ame elevée et sensible,” continued to be not only of undisputed authenticity, but one of Cicero’s most admired productions, till Wolf, in the preface and notes to a new edition of it, printed in 1802, attempted to show, that it was a spurious production, totally unworthy of the orator whose name it bore, and that it was written by some declaimer, soon after the Augustan age, not as an imposition upon the public, but as an exercise,—according to the practice of the rhetoricians, who were wont to choose, as a theme, some subject on which Cicero had spoken. In his letters to Atticus, Cicero says, that he had returned thanks to Cæsar _pluribus verbis_. This Middleton translates a _long speech_; but Wolf alleges it can only mean a few words, and never can be interpreted to denote a full oration, such as that which we now possess for Marcellus. That Cicero did not deliver a long or formal speech, is evident, he contends, from the testimony of Plutarch, who mentions, in his life of Cicero, that, a short time afterwards, when the orator was about to plead for Ligarius, Cæsar asked, how it happened that he had not heard Cicero speak for so long a period,—which would have been absurd if he had heard him, a few months before, pleading for Marcellus. Being an extemporary effusion, called forth by an unforeseen occasion, it could not (he continues to urge) have been prepared and written beforehand; nor is it at all probable, that, like many other orations of Cicero, it was revised and made public after being delivered. The causes which induced the Roman orators to write out their speeches at leisure, were the magnitude and public importance of the subject, or the wishes of those in whose defence they were made, and who were anxious to possess a sort of record of their vindication. But none of these motives existed in the present case. The matter was of no importance or difficulty; and we know that Marcellus, who was a stern republican, was not at all gratified by the intervention of the senators, or conciliated by the clemency of Cæsar. As to internal evidence, deduced from the oration, Wolf admits, that there are interspersed in it some Ciceronian sentences; and how otherwise could the learned have been so egregiously deceived? but the resemblance is more in the varnish of the style than in the substance. We have the words rather than the thoughts of Cicero; and the rounding of his periods, without their energy and argumentative connection. He adduces, also, many instances of phrases unusual among the classics, and of conceits which betray the rhetorician or sophist. His extolling the act of that day on