pounces upon the above-named error with profoundest satisfaction, and
tells us a pleasant little story about an old woman who thought that
four million people had been once collected at Caernarvon. Middleton had
found the figure wrongly deciphered and wrongly copied for him, and had
translated it as he found it, without much thought. De Quincey thinks
that the error is sufficient to throw over all faith in the book: "It is
in the light of an evidence against Middleton's good-sense and
thoughtfulness that I regard it as capital." That is De Quincey's
estimate of Middleton as a biographer. I regard him as a laborer who
spared himself no trouble, who was enabled by his nature to throw
himself with enthusiasm into his subject, who knew his work as a writer
of English, and who, by a combination of erudition, intelligence, and
industry, has left us one of those books of which it may truly be said
that no English library should be without it.

The last letter written by Cicero in Asia was sent to Atticus from
Ephesus the day before he started--on the last day, namely, of September.
He had been delayed by winds and by want of vessels large enough to carry
him and his suite. News here reached him from Rome--news which was not
true in its details, but true enough in its spirit. In a letter to
Atticus he speaks of "miros terrores Caesarianos"[115]--"dreadful reports
as to outrages by Caesar;" that he would by no means dismiss his army;
that he had with him the Praetors elect, one of the Tribunes, and even one
of the Consuls; and that Pompey had resolved to leave the city. Such were
the first tidings presaging Pharsalia. Then he adds a word about his
triumph. "Tell me what you think about this triumph, which my friends
desire me to seek. I should not care about it if Bibulus were not also
asking for a triumph--Bibulus, who never put a foot outside his own doors
as long as there was an enemy in Syria!" Thus Cicero had to suffer untold
misery because Bibulus was asking for a triumph!

CHAPTER V.

_THE WAR BETWEEN CAESAR AND POMPEY._

What official arrangements were made for Proconsuls in regard to money,
when in command of a province, we do not know. The amounts allowed were
no doubt splendid, but it was not to them that the Roman governor looked
as the source of that fortune which he expected to amass. The means of
plunder were infinite, but of plunder always subject to the danger of an
accusation. We remember how Verre