To Miss Hunt Shirley, July 28, 1795 'I must tell you that I cannot help being quite reconciled to Cicero... If you have not yet met with it, only read, as a sample, the first book of his "Tuscular disputations", "de contemrenda morte", and I think you will agree with me, that with the addition of Christianity to confirm his supposition, and rectify a few mistakes in them, and the knowledge of the true state of the universe, no doctrine can be more perfect than his; and that half the modern books on the subject might have been spared, had the writers of them, before they began, read this dialogue.'