The old gentleman was sixty-three years of age when he addressed it to his friend T.Pomponius Atticus, Eq., a person of distinction, some two or three years older.

We read it when we are schoolboys, forget all about it for thirty years, and then take it up again by a natural instinct,--provided always that we read Latin as we drink water, without stopping to taste it, as all of us who ever learned it at school or college ought to do.
Cato is the chief speaker in the dialogue.

A good deal of it is what would be called in vulgar phrase "slow." It unpacks and unfolds incidental illustrations which a modern writer would look at the back of, and toss each to its pigeon-hole.

I think ancient classics and ancient people are alike in the tendency to this kind of expansion.
An old doctor came to me once (this is literal fact) with some contrivance or other for people with broken kneepans.

As the patient would be confined for a good while, he might find it dull work to sit with his hands in his lap.