ell with him. He writes throughout as one who had no great sorrow at
his heart. No one would have thought that in this very year he was
perplexed in his private affairs, even to the putting away of his wife;
that Caesar had made good his ground, and, having been Dictator last
year, had for the third time become Consul; that he knew himself to be
living, as a favor, by Caesar's pleasure. Cicero seems to have written
his Brutus as one might write who was well at ease. Let a man have
taught himself aught, and have acquired the love of letters, it is easy
for him then, we might say, to carry on his work. What is it to him that
politicians are cutting each other's throats around him? He has not gone
into that arena and fought and bled there, nor need he do so. Though
things may have gone contrary to his views, he has no cause for anger,
none for personal disappointment, none for personal shame; but with
Cicero, on every morning as he rose he must have remembered Pompey and
have thought of Caesar. And though Caesar was courteous to him, the
courtesy of a ruler is hard to be borne by him who himself has ruled.
Caesar was Consul; and Cicero, who remembered how majestically he had
walked when a few years since he was Consul by the real votes of the
people, how he had been applauded for doing his duty to the people, how
he had been punished for stretching the laws on the people's behalf, how
he had refused everything for the people, must have had bitter feelings
in his heart when he sat down to write this conversation with Brutus and
with Atticus. Yet it has all the cheerfulness which might have been
expected from a happy mind. But we must remark that at its close--in its
very final words--he does allude with sad melancholy to the state of
affairs, and that then it breaks off abruptly. Even in the middle of a
sentence it is brought to a close, and the reader is left to imagine
that something has been lost, or that more might have been added.

The last of these works is the Orator. We have passed in review the De
Oratore, and the Brutus; or, De Claris Oratoribus. We have now to
consider that which is commonly believed to be the most finished piece
of the three. Such seems to have become the general idea of those
scholars who have spoken and written on the subject. He himself says
that there are in all five books. There are the three De Oratore; the
fourth is called the Brutus, and the fifth the Orator.[265] In some MSS.
this work h