It is difficult to give any sketch of the argumentative part of this famed controversy, as the merit of all such discussion consists in the extreme accuracy and minuteness of investigation. The main scope, however, of the objections, is thus generally exhibited by Tunstall in his Latin epistle. He declares, “that as he came fresh from the perusal of Cicero’s genuine letters, he perceived that those to Brutus wanted the beauty and copiousness of the Ciceronian diction—that the epistles, both of Brutus and Cicero, were drawn in the same style and manner of colouring, and trimmed up with so much art and diligence, that they seemed to proceed rather from scholastic subtlety and meditation, than from the genuine acts and affairs of life—that when, both before and after the date of the letters to Atticus, several epistles had been addressed from Brutus to Cicero, and from Cicero to Brutus, it was strange that those which preceded the letters to Atticus should have been lost, and those alone remain which appear to have been industriously designed for an epilogue to the Epistles to Atticus—that such reasons induced him to suspect, but on looking farther into the letters themselves, he discovered many absurdities in the sense, many improprieties in the language, many remarkable predictions of future events, both on Brutus’s side and Cicero’s; but what was most material, a great number of historical facts, not only quite new, but wholly altered, and some even apparently false, and contradictory to the genuine works of Cicero.” Such was the state of the controversy, as it stood between Tunstall and Middleton. In 1745, the year after Middleton had published his translation of the epistles, Markland engaged in this literary contest, and came forward in opposition to the authenticity of the letters, by publishing his “Remarks on the Epistles of Cicero to Brutus, and of Brutus to Cicero, in a Letter to a Friend.” The arguments of Tunstall had chiefly turned on historical inconsistencies—those of Markland principally hinge on phrases to be found in the letters, which are not Ciceronian, or even of pure Latinity. I must here close this long account of the writings of Cicero—of Cicero, distinguished as the Consul of the republic—as the father and saviour of his country—but not less distinguished as the orator, philosopher, and moralist of Rome.—“Salve primus omnium Parens Patriæ appellate,—primus in togâ triumphum linguæque lauream merite, et facundiæ, Latiarumque Literarum parens: atque (ut Dictator Cæsar, hostis quondam tuus, de te scripsit,) omnium triumphorum lauream adopte majorem; quanto plus est, ingenii Romani terminos in tantum promovisse, quàm imperii(491).” ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐