occasion to mention the failure of his friends, as in relating Curio’s defeat and death in Africa, he does it with tenderness and indulgence. Of his enemies, he speaks without insult or contempt; and even in giving his judgment upon a great military question, though he disapproves Pompey’s mode of waiting for the attack at Pharsalia, his own reasons for a contrary opinion are urged with deference and candour. The confident hopes which were entertained in Pompey’s camp—the pretensions and disputes of the leading senators, about the division of patronage and officers, and the confiscations which were supposed to be just falling within their grasp, furnished him with some amusing anecdotes, which it must have been difficult to resist inserting; nor can we wonder, that while all the preparations for celebrating the anticipated victory with luxury and festivity, were matters of ocular observation, he should have devoted some few passages in his Commentaries, to recording the vanity and presumption of such fond expectations. Labienus, who had deserted him, and Scipio, who gave him so much trouble, by rekindling the war, are those of whom he speaks with the greatest rancour, in relating the cruelty of the former, and the tyrannical ingenious rapacity of the latter(198). Whatever concerns the events of the civil war could not easily have been falsified or misrepresented. So many enemies, who had been eye-witnesses of everything, survived that period, that the author could scarcely have swerved from the truth without detection. But in his contests with the Gauls, and Germans, and Britons, there was no one to contradict him. Those who accompanied him were devoted to his fame and fortunes, and interested like himself in exalting the glory of these foreign exploits. That he has varnished over the real motives, and also the issue, of his expedition to Britain has been frequently suspected. The reason he himself assigns for the undertaking is, that he understood supplies had been thence furnished to the enemy, in almost all the Gallic wars; but Suetonius asserts, that the information he had received of the quantity and size of the pearls on the British coast, was his real inducement. Fourteen short chapters in the fourth book of the Gallic war, relate his first visit, and his hasty return; and sixteen in the fifth, detail his progress in the following summer. These chapters have derived importance from containing the earliest authentic memorials of the inhabitants and state of this island; and there has, of course, been much discussion on the genuine though imperfect notices they afford. Various tracts, chiefly published in the _Archæologia_, have topographically followed the various steps of Cæsar’s progress, particularly his passage across the Thames, and have debated the situation of the Portus Iccius, from which he embarked for Britain.