Cæsar’s Commentaries and Hirtius’ supplements are written with such conciseness and terseness, that to abridge them still more would leave nothing but a reduced miniature outline; and therefore I refer you to the work itself. The oftener one reads them, the more one recognises the hand of a great master. There remains, however, much to be done for him: a critical edition is much wanted. With regard to the Gallic war much good is to be expected; not only from the manuscripts already collated, of which there are many, but also from those not yet collated, the number of which is still greater. The Italian ones, especially those at Florence and in the Vatican, are some of them very old, and have for the most part not yet been made use of; the English ones, the majority of which have been collated, are of very inferior value. The manuscripts of the books _De Bello Gallico_ are not to be traced to one single family, as is the case with those _De Bello Civili_: in these little is to be gathered from the collations; the same gaps are found in all of them, and they are likewise ἀκέφαλοι, the first words being patched in, in the later times of the middle ages, to hide the defect a little. Davis and Oudendorp were very well aware of this. As for the other books, I put them up some time ago as the subject for a prize essay, but without success: I will tell you my opinion about them. The appended book on the Alexandrine war, and the last on the Gallic war, in their style and manner evidently betray the same author, that is, A. Hirtius, a most accomplished man, to whom we may certainly give the credit of something so sterling. To think of Pansa is quite preposterous. It is one of the most excellent works which we have in the range of Latin literature; the language is most highly classical, being the Latin then spoken by the first men of the day. Very different is the book _De Bello Africano_, which I unhesitatingly ascribe to C. Oppius. It is indeed clever, written by a very good officer, and thoroughly trustworthy; but the style is much less elegant. Oppius was the companion of Cæsar in all his wars, and one of his dearest friends. Once, while on a journey, they both put up for the night at the same cottage, when, Oppius being ill, Cæsar gave up to him the only disposable room in the house, and he himself slept in the passage. Such traits are quite unstudied, showing us Cæsar as he really was. Who wrote the book _De Bello Hispaniensi_, heaven knows; certainly a man who did not belong to good society, its language being the genuine vulgar idiom of the common Roman soldier: it is an extract from the diaries which a dull fellow kept during the war, and it is a curious and odd performance of its kind.