The statement involved in the words 'quos Cicero emendavit,' has also been the subject of much criticism. No one can read the poem without recognising the truth of the conclusion established by Lachmann, and accepted by the most competent Editors of the poem since his time, that the work must have been left by the author in an unfinished state and given to the world by some friend or some person to whom the task of editing it had been entrusted. But there is some difficulty in accepting the statement that this editor was Cicero. His silence on the subject of his editorial labours, when contrasted with the frank communicativeness of his Epistles in regard to anything which for the time interested him, and the slight esteem with which he seems to have regarded the poem and the philosophy which it embodied, justify some hesitation in accepting the authority of Jerome on this point also. He only once mentions the poem in a letter to his brother Quintus, and in passages of his philosophical works in which he seems to allude to it he expresses himself slightingly and somewhat contemptuously[346]. In the disparaging references to the Latin writers on Greek philosophy before the appearance of his own Tusculan Questions and Academics, he makes no exception in favour of Lucretius. The words in his letter to his brother Quintus are these, 'Lucretii poemata, ut scribis, ita sunt, [non] multis luminibus ingenii, multae tamen artis: sed cum veneris, virum te putabo, si Salustii Empedoclea legeris, hominem non putabo.' In the MS. the _non_, seemingly required by the antithesis, is found neither before the _multis_, nor the _multae_: we are thus left in doubt whether it was the genius or the art of the poem that Cicero denied. A correction of the passage has been suggested[347], in accordance with which Cicero's discernment is vindicated, and the impression that the poem was deficient in art is attributed to Q. Cicero. Those who hesitate to accept this correction may yet agree with the view that if the _non_ must be inserted, it is better to insert it before the _multae_ than the _multis_. Even as the passage stands, it may be a short summing up of a more detailed criticism of the younger brother[348], to this effect. 'I agree with you that there is much genius in the poem of Lucretius, and (though this is less apparent) much art.' Cicero certainly admits either the genius or the art of the poem; perhaps both. It is a truer criticism, and more in accordance with Cicero's expressed opinion of all the Epicurean writings, to admit the exceptional genius of the poem while denying its artistic excellence, than to deny the first and admit the last. Thus if his notice of the poem is slight, it is not markedly deficient in appreciation. Mr. Munro succeeds in explaining Cicero's silence on the subject in his other correspondence. It is in his Letters to his oldest and most intimate correspondent, the Epicurean Atticus, that we should