My tale was entitled 'Memnon, or Human Wisdom,' and is as follows." Then we have a fair translation of Voltaire's romance, "Memnon," or "La Sagesse Humaine." The old lord, when he was collecting his papers for his autobiography, had altogether forgotten his Voltaire, and thought that he had composed the story! Nothing so absurd as that is told of Cicero by himself or on his behalf.
It may be as well to say here what there may be to be said as to Cicero's poetry generally.

But little of it remains to us, and by that little it has been admitted that he has not achieved the name of a great poet; but what he did was too great in extent and too good in its nature to be passed over altogether without notice.

It has been his fate to be rather ridiculed than read as a maker of verses, and that ridicule has come from two lines which I have already quoted.

The longest piece which we have is from the Phaenomena of Aratus, which he translated from the Greek when he was eighteen years old, and which describes the heavenly bodies.

It is known to us best by the extracts from it given by the author himself in his treatise, De Natura Deorum.