"Oh that mine adversary had written a book!" Who does not understand the truth of these words! It is always out of a man's mouth that you may most surely condemn him. Cicero wrote many books, and all about himself. He has been honored very highly. Middleton, in the preface to his own biography, which, with all its charms, has become a bye-word for eulogy, quotes the opinion of Erasmus, who tells us that he loves the writings of the man "not only for the divine felicity of his style, but for the sanctity of his heart and morals." This was the effect left on the mind of an accurate thinker and most just man. But then also has Cicero been spoken of with the bitterest scorn. From Dio Cassius, who wrote two hundred and twenty years after Christ, down to Mr. Froude, whose Cæsar has just been published, he has had such hard things said of him by men who have judged him out of his own mouth, that the reader does not know how to reconcile what he now reads with the opinion of men of letters who lived and wrote in the century next after his death--with the testimony of such a man as Erasmus, and with the hearty praises of his biographer, Middleton. The sanctity of his heart and morals! It was thus that Erasmus was struck in reading his works. It is a feeling of that kind, I profess, that has induced me to take this work in hand--a feeling produced altogether by the study of his own words. It has seemed to be that he has loved men so well, has been so anxious for the true, has been so capable of honesty when dishonesty was common among all around him, has been so jealous in the cause of good government, has been so hopeful when there has been but little ground for hope, as to have deserved a reputation for sanctity of heart and morals. Of the speeches made by Cicero as advocate after his Quæstorship, and before those made in the accusation of Verres, we have the fragment only of the second of two spoken in defence of Marcus Tullius Decula, whom we may suppose to have been distantly connected with his family. He does not avow any relationship. "What," he says, in opening his argument, "does it become me, a Tullius, to do for this other Tullius, a man not only my friend, but my namesake?" It was a matter of no great importance, as it was addressed to judges not so called, but to "recuperatores," judges chosen by the Prætor, and who acted in lighter cases. CHAPTER VI. _VERRES._