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 regarded the philosophy which is embodied in the poem, 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[8], and in passages of his philosophical works in which he seems to allude to it he expresses himself slightingly and somewhat contemptuously[9]. 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, multis luminibus ingenii, multae tamen artis: sed cum veneris, virum te putabo, si Sallustii Empedoclea legeris, hominem non putabo.' Professor Tyrrell in his 'Correspondence of Cicero,' remarks on this passage (vol. II. page 106): 'The criticism of Quintus, with which Cicero expresses his accord, was that Lucretius had not only much of the _genius_ of Ennius and Attius, but also much of the _art_ of the poets of the new school, among them even Catullus, who are fashioning themselves on the model of the Alexandrine poets, especially Callimachus and Euphorion of Chalcis. This new school Cicero refers to as the [Greek: neoteroi] (Att. VII. 2. 1) and as _hi cantores Euphorionis_ (Tusc. III. 45). Their _ars_ seemed to Cicero almost incompatible with the _ingenium_ of the old school. This criticism on Lucretius is not only quite just from Cicero's point of view, but it is most pointed. Yet the editors from Victorius to Klotz will not let Cicero say what he thought. They insert a _non_ either before _multis_ or before _multae_, and thus deny him either _ingenium_ or _ars_. The point of the judgment is that Lucretius shows the genius of the old school and (what might seem to be incompatible with it) the art of the new[10].' Thus if his notice of the poem is slight, it is not 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 expect to find notices of his editorial labours.