Matters were in this situation, when Tunstall, in 1741, addressed a Latin Epistle to Middleton, written professedly to introduce a proposal for a new edition of Cicero’s letters to Atticus, and his brother Quintus. In the first part of this epistle, he attempted to retrieve the original readings of these authentic treasures of Ciceronian history, and asserted their genuine sense against the corruptions or false interpretations of them, which had led to many erroneous conclusions in Middleton’s Life of Cicero. In the second part, he denies the authenticity of the whole correspondence between Cicero and Brutus, which he alleges is the production of some sophist or scholiast of the middle ages, who probably wrote them, according to the practice of those days, as an exercise for his rhetorical talents, and with the view either of drawing up a supplement to the Epistles to Atticus, so as to carry on the history from the period at which they terminate, or to vindicate Cicero’s character from the imputation of rashness, in throwing too much power into the hands of Octavius. Tunstall farther thinks, that the leading subject of these letters was suggested to the sophist by a passage in Plutarch’s Life of Brutus, where it is mentioned that Brutus had remonstrated with Cicero, and complained of him to their mutual friend Atticus, for the court he paid to Octavius, which showed that his aim was not to procure liberty for his country, but a kind master to himself. Middleton soon afterwards published an English translation of the whole correspondence between Brutus and Cicero, with notes; and, in a prefatory dissertation, written with considerable and unprovoked asperity, he attempted to vindicate the authority of the epistles, and to answer the objections of Tunstall. His adversary replied in an immense English work, of more than 400 pages, entitled, “Observations on the present Collection of Epistles between Cicero and Brutus, representing several evident marks of Forgery in those Epistles, in answer to the late pretences of Dr Middleton: 1744.”