But it cannot be said that these productions of decadence have exercised any appreciable effect upon English speaking or writing. Just as in verse the Romans invented one form of literature, the satire, so in prose they probably invented the epistle or letter. In Greek literature letters are seldom found; those which are found are of dubious authenticity, and in any case they are but essays in epistolary form. But in Latin we meet with two great letter-writers, who, if they had written nothing else, would have occupied the same positions in literature as are occupied by Horace Walpole in England and by Madame de Sévigné in France. The correspondence of Cicero was followed, a century and a half later, by the correspondence of Pliny the younger, and both are full of literary and also of historical interest. How far any of the letters of Cicero were intended for publication is doubtful; very many of them obviously were not. Those of Pliny, however, were carefully composed with the distinct object of being given to the world. Apart from the different characters and environment of the two men, there is consequently an appreciable dissimilarity in the style. Except when he is writing formal or courtesy letters to comparative strangers the correspondence of Cicero carries with it a natural and unstudied air. He is vehement, jocular, despondent, testy, as he thinks fit. He puns freely, breaks off a sentence, quotes Greek, or uses colloquial terms. It would have been well if critics of Cicero’s character had remembered to distinguish private and not always serious correspondence from public behaviour. With Pliny the case is otherwise. He was constitutionally a kindly man, with a genuine love for letters; by training he was a staid man of affairs; in circumstances he was rich, and his later years were leisured. But he was withal a man who took himself with some excess of seriousness. In any case he would not have forgotten what was orthodox for a Roman gentleman; least of all was he likely to forget it in letters destined for publication. His epistles are therefore always marked by a certain reserve and a suggestion that they are intended to rank as literature. Probably there would have been less unbending still, except for the warrant of the letters of Cicero, who is plainly his model. Yet, in spite of these drawbacks, they give an excellent picture of contemporary Roman life, and afford an insight, otherwise unattainable, into current Roman sentiment. For us it is important to note that the literary letter-writing of France and England was, in the first instance, directly suggested by these patterns of ancient Rome. * * * * *