This account of the two editions of the Academics, which was first suggested by Talæus(420), has been adopted by Goerenz(421); and it appears to me completely confirmed by the series of Cicero’s letters to Atticus, contained in the 13th book of his Epistles. It is by no means, however, unanimously assented to by the French and German commentators. Lambinus, seeing that Nonius quoted, as belonging to the fourth book of the _Academica_, passages which we find in the Lucullus, or second book of the first edition, considered and inscribed it as the fourth of the new edition, instead of the second of the old, in which he was followed by many subsequent editors; but this is easily accounted for, since the new edition, being remodelled on the old, many things in the last or second book of the old edition would naturally be transferred to the fourth or last of the new, and be so cited by those grammarians who wrote when the whole work was extant. Ranitz denies that there ever were two editions of the _Academica_ made public, or preserved, and that, so far from the last three books being lost, the Lucullus contains the whole of these three, but from the error of transcribers they have been run into each other(422). This critic is right, indeed, in the notion he entertains, that Cicero wished the first edition of the _Academica_ to be destroyed, or to fall into oblivion, but it does not follow that either of these wishes was accomplished; and indeed it is proved, from Cicero’s own letters, that the older edition had passed into extensive circulation.