ill doubtless rouse different feelings in different
minds. But though he will still, as he did in his lifetime, excite
vehement disapproval as well as strong admiration, he will never, I
think, appear to anyone dull or uninteresting. In the greater part of
his letters he is not posing or assuming a character; he lets us only
too frankly into his weaknesses and his vanities, as well as his
generous admirations and warm affections. Whether he is weeping, or
angry, or exulting, or eager for compliments, or vain of his abilities
and achievements, he is not a phantasm or a farceur, but a human being
with fiercely-beating pulse and hot blood.

The difficulty of the task which I have been bold enough to undertake
is well known to scholars, and may explain, though perhaps not excuse,
the defects of my work. One who undertakes to express the thoughts of
antiquity in modern idiom goes to his task with his eyes open, and has
no right at every stumbling-block or pitfall to bemoan his unhappy fate.
So also with the particular difficulties presented by the great founder
of Latin style--his constant use of superlatives, his doubling and
trebling of nearly synonymous terms, the endless shades of meaning in
such common words as _officium_, _fides_, _studium_, _humanitas_,
_dignitas_, and the like--all these the translator has to take in the
day's work. Finally, there are the hard nuts to crack--often very
hard--presented by corruption of the text. Such problems, though,
relatively with other ancient works, not perhaps excessively numerous,
are yet sufficiently numerous and sufficiently difficult. But besides
these, which are the natural incidents of such work, there is the
special difficulty that the letters are frequently answers to others
which we do not possess, and which alone can fully explain the meaning
of sentences which must remain enigmatical to us; or they refer to
matters by a word or phrase of almost telegraphic abruptness, with which
the recipient was well acquainted, but as to which we are reduced to
guessing. When, however, all such insoluble difficulties are allowed
for, which after all in absolute bulk are very small, there should (if
the present version is at all worthy) be enough that is perfectly plain
to everyone, and generally of the highest interest.

I had no intention of writing a commentary on the language of Cicero or
his correspondents, and my translation must, as a rule, be taken for the
only expression of