Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/411

46 B.C.]

critical acuteness in detecting the true flavour of Cicero's jests, and in refusing to be taken in by the work of any inferior craftsman.

"Cæsar has a very shrewd literary judgment, and just as your brother Servius, one of the best critics I ever knew, would say off-hand, 'this verse is Plautus', this is not,' because he had an ear trained by habits of study and of noting the style of the various poets, so I am told, that Cæsar, when compiling a collection of jests, would at once reject any spurious ones which were brought to him under my name. He can do this the more easily at present, because his most intimate friends are almost every day in my company. Many things drop out in the course of conversation which my hearers are good enough to consider not devoid of wit and neatness. These are regularly reported to him along with the news of the day—such are his orders—and so he pays no attention to forgeries from outside."

This period of suspense from active politics was fruitful in literary labour, which was indeed Cicero's most plentiful source of contentment. "I must tell you," he writes to Varro, "that so soon as I returned home again I was restored to favour by my old friends, my books. They have forgiven my neglect, and summon me back to the old intimacy." The works of the next year and a half are chiefly on the art of rhetoric. In the Brutus and the Orator ad Brutum Cicero pursues the discussions