From reading these, without reference to the idiosyncrasies of the writer, the student would be led to believe that Cicero himself was a philosopher after that sort.

But he was, in truth, the last of men to lend his ears "To those budge doctors of the stoic fur." Cicero was a man thoroughly human in all his strength and all his weakness.

To sit apart from the world and be happy amid scorn, poverty, and obscurity, with a mess of cabbage and a crust, absolutely contented with abstract virtue, has probably been given to no man; but of none has it been less within the reach than of Cicero.

To him ginger was always hot in the mouth, whether it was the spice of politics, or of social delight, or of intellectual enterprise.

When in his deep sorrow at the death of his daughter, when for a time the Republic was dead to him, and public and private life were equally black, he craved employment.