ur truest love for our friends,
some fear is mingled which forbids the use of open words. Whether this
be for good or for evil I will not say, but it is so. Cicero, whether he
did or did not know that his letters would live, was impeded by no such
fear. He said everything that there was within him--being in this, I
should say, quite as unlike to other Romans of the day as he was to
ourselves. In the collection as it has come to us there are about fifty
letters--not from Cicero--written to Cicero by his brother, by Decimus
Brutus, by Plancus, and others. It will, I think, be admitted that their
tone is quite different from that used by himself. There are none,
indeed, from Atticus--none written under terms of such easy friendship
as prevailed when many were written by Cicero himself. It will probably
be acknowledged that his manner of throwing himself open to his
correspondent was peculiar to him. If this be so, he should surely have
the advantage as well as the disadvantage of his own mode of utterance.
The reader who allows himself to think that the true character of the
man is to be read in the little sly things he said to Atticus, but that
the nobler ideas were merely put forth to cajole the public, is as
unfair to himself as he is to Cicero.

In reading the entire correspondence--the letters from Cicero either to
Atticus or to others--it has to be remembered that in the ordinary
arrangement of them made by Graevius[138] they are often incorrectly
paced in regard to chronology. In subsequent times efforts have been
made to restore them to their proper position, and so they should be
read. The letters to Atticus and those Ad Diversos have generally been
published separately. For the ordinary purpose of literary pleasure they
may perhaps be best read in that way. The tone of them is different. The
great bulk of the correspondence is political, or quasi-political. The
manner is much more familiar, much less severe--though not on that
account indicating less seriousness--in those written to Atticus than in
the others. With one or two signal exceptions, those to Atticus are
better worth reading. The character of the writer may perhaps be best
gathered from divided perusal; but for a general understanding of the
facts of Cicero's life, the whole correspondence should be taken as it
was written. It has been published in this shape as well as in the
other, and will be used in this shape in my effort to portray the life
of hi