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a vast library, have far outweighed the neglect or the calumny of the world, which some of its votaries have received. From the time that Cicero poured forth his feelings in his oration for the poet Archias, innumerable are the testimonies of men of letters of the pleasurable delirium of their researches; that delicious beverage which they have swallowed, so thirstily, from the magical cup of literature. Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, Chancellor and high treasurer of England so early as 1341, perhaps raised the first private library in our country. He purchased thirty or forty volumes of the abbot of St. Albans for fifty pounds weight of silver. He was so enamoured of his large collection, that he expressly composed a treatise on his love of books, under the title of Philobiblion,' an honourable tri-Bibliotheque du Roi' is a curious incident in literature. bute paid to literature, in an age not literary.

To pass much of our time amid such vast resources, that man must indeed be not more animated than a leaden Mercury, who does not aspire to make some small addition to his library, were it only by a critical catalogue! He must be as indolent as that animal called the sloth, who perishes on the tree he climbs, after he has eaten all its leaves.

Henry Rantzau, a Danish gentleman, the founder of the great library at Copenhagen, whose days were dissolved in the pleasures of reading, discovers his taste and ardour in the following elegant effusion:

Salvete aureoli mei libelli,
Meæ delicia, mei lepores.

Quam vos sæpe oculis juvat videre,
Et tritos manibus tenere nostris !
Tot vos eximii, tot eruditi,
Prisci lumina sæculi et recentis,
Confecere viri, suasque vobis
Ausi credere lucubrationes:

Et sperare decus perenne scriptis ;
Neque hæc irrita spes fefellit illos.

IMITATED.

Golden volumes! richest treasures
Objects of delicious pleasures!
You my eyes rejoicing please,
You my hands in rapture seize!
Brilliant wits and musing sages,

Lights who beam'd through many ages!
Left to your conscious leaves their story,
And dared to trust you with their glory;
And now their hope of fame achiev'd,
Dear volumes!-you have not deceived!

This passion for the acquisition and enjoyment of books, as been the occasion of their lovers embellishing their outsides with costly ornaments; a rage which ostentation may have abused; but when these volumes belong to the real man of letters, the most fanciful bindings are often the emblems of his taste and feelings. The great Thuanus was eager to purchase the finest copies for his library, and his volumes are still eagerly purchased, bearing his autograph on the last page. A celebrated amateur was Grollier, whose library was opulent in these luxuries; the Muses themselves could not more ingeniously have ornamented their favourite works. I have seen several in the libraries of our own curious collectors. He embellished their outside with taste and ingenuity. They are gilded and stamped with peculiar neatness, the compartments on the binding are drawn, and painted, with different inventions of subjects, analogous to the works themselves; and they are farther adorned by that amiable inscription, Jo Grollierii et amicorum. pur porting that these literary treasures were collected for himself and for his friends!

The family of the Fuggers had long felt an hereditary passion for the accumulation of literary treasures; and their portraits, with others in their picture gallery, form a curious quarto volume of 127 portraits, excessively rare even in Germany, entitled Fuggerorum Pinacotheca.' Wolfius, who daily haunted their celebrated library, pours out his gratitude in some Greek verses, and describes this Bibliotheque as a literary heaven, furnished with as many books as there were stars in the firmament; or as a lite rary garden, in which he passed entire days in gathering fruit and flowers, delighting and instructing himself by perpetual occupation.

In 1364 the royal library of France did not exceed twenty volumes. Shortly after Charles V increased it to nine hundred, which by the fate of war, as much at least as that of money, the Duke of Bedford afterwards purchased and ransported to London, where libraries were smaller than

on the continent, about 1440. It is a circumstance worthy observation, that the French sovereign, Charles V, sur named the Wise, ordered that thirty portable lights, with a silver lamp suspended from the centre, should be illumin ated at night, that students might not find their pursuits interrupted at any hour. Many among us, at this moment, whose professional avocations admit not of morning studies, find that the resources of a public library are not accessible to them from the omission of the regulation of the zealous Charles V of France. An alarming objection to nightstudies in public libraries is the danger of fire, and in our own British Museum not a light is permitted to be carried about on any pretence whatever. The history of the and the progress of the human mind and public opinion might be traced by its gradual accessions, noting the changeable qualities of its literary stores chiefly from theology, law and medicine, to philosophy, and elegant literature. In 1789 Neckar reckoned the literary treasures to amount to 225,000 printed books, 70,000 manuscripts, and 15,000 collections of prints. By a curious little volume published by M. Le Prince in 1782, it appears that it was first under Louis XIV that the productions of the art of engraving were collected and arranged; the great minister Colbert purchased the extensive collections of the Abbé de Marolles, who may be ranked among the fathers of our print-collectors. Two hundred and sixty-four ample portfolios laid the foundations, and the catalogues of his collections, printed by Marolles himself, are rare, curious, and high-priced. Our own national print-gallery is yet an infant establishment.

Mr Hallam has observed, that in 1440, England had made comparatively but little progress in learning-and However Germany was probably still less advanced. there was in Germany a celebrated collector of books in the person of Trithemius, the celebrated abbot of Spanheim, who died in 1516; he had amassed about two thousand manuscripts, a literary treasure which excited such general attention, that princes and eminent men of that day travelled to visit Trithemius and his library. About this time six or eight hundred volumes formed a royal collection, and their high value in price could only be furnished by a prince. This was indeed a great advancement in libraries, when at the beginning of the fourteenth century the library of Louis IX contained only four classical authors, and that of Oxford, in 1300, consisted of a few tracts kept in chest.'

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The pleasures of study are classed by Burton among those exercises or recreations of the mind which pass within doors. Looking about this 'world of books' he exclaims, I could even live and die with such meditations, and take more delight and true content of mind in them, than in all thy wealth and sport! there is a sweetness, which, as Circe's cup, bewitcheth a student, he cannot leave off, as well may witness those many laborious hours, days and nights, spent in their voluminous treatises. So sweet is the delight of study. The last day is prioris discipulus.' Heinsius was mewed up in the library of Leyden all the year long, and that which to my thinking should have bred a loathing, caused in him a greater liking. I no sooner, saith he, come into the library, but I bolt the door to me, excluding Lust, Ambition, Avarice, and al. such vices, whose nurse is Idleness, the mother of Ignor ance and Melancholy. In the very lap of eternity amongst so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit, and sweet content, that I pity all our great ones and rich men, that know not this happiness.' Such is the incense of a votary who scatters it on the altar less for the cere mony than from the devotion.

There is, however, an intemperance in study, incompa tible often with our social or more active duties. The illustrious Grotius exposed himself to the reproaches of some of his contemporaries for having too warmly pursued his studies, to the detriment of his public station. It was the boast of Cicero, that his philosophical studies had never interfered with the services he owed the republic, and that he had only dedicated to them the hours which others gave to their walks, their repasts, and their pleasures. Looking on his voluminous labours, we are surprised at this observation: how honourable is it to him, that his various philosophical works bear the titles of the different villas he possessed; which shows that they were composed in their respective retirements. Cicero must have been an early riser; and practised that magic art e employing his time, as to have multiplied his days.

THE BIBLIOMANIA.

The preceding article is honourable to literature, yet impartial truth must show that even a passion for collecting books is not always a passion for literature.

The Bibliomania,' or the collecting an enormous heap of books without intelligent curiosity, has, since libraries have existed, infected weak minds, who imagine that they themselves acquire knowledge when they keep it on their shelves. Their motley libraries have been called the mad houses of the human mind; and again, the tomb of books, when the possessor will not communicate them, and coffins them up in the cases of his library-and as it was facetiously observed, these collections are not without a Lock on the human Understanding.*

The Bibliomania has never raged more violently than in the present day. It is fortunate that literature is in no ways injured by the follies of collectors, since though they preserve the worthless, they necessarily defend the good. Some collectors place all their fame on the view of a splendid library, where volumes arrayed in all the pomp lettering, silk linings, triple gold bands and tinted leather, are locked up in wire cases, and secured from the vulgar hands of the mere reader, dazzling our eyes like eastern beauties peering through their jealousies!

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Bruyere has touched on this mania with humour: 'Of such a collector,' says he, as soon as I enter his house, I am ready to faint on the staircase, from a strong smell of Morocco leather: in vain he shows me fine editions, gold leaves, Etruscan bindings, &c., naming them one after another, as if he were showing a gallery of pictures! a gallery by the by which he seldom traverses when alone, for he rarely reads, but me he offers to conduct through it! I thank him for his politeness, and, as little as himself, care to visit the tan-house, which he calls his library,'

Lucian has composed a biting invective against an ignorant possessor of a vast library. Like him, who in the present day, after turning over the pages of an old book, chiefly admires the date. Lucian compares him to a pilot, who was never taught the science of navigation; to a rider who cannot keep his seat on a spirited horse; to a man who not having the use of his feet, wishes to conceal the defect by wearing embroidered shoes; but, alas! he cannot stand in them! He ludicrously compares him to Thersites wearing the armour of Achilles, tottering at every step; leering with his little eyes under his enormous helmet, and his hunch-back raising the cuirass above his shoulders. Why do you buy so many books? he says:you have no hair, and you purchase a comb; you are blind, and you will have a grand mirror; you are deaf, and you will have fine musical instruments! Your costly bindings are only a source of vexation, and you are continually discharging your librarians for not preserving them from the silent invasion of the worms, and the nibbling triumphs

of the rats!

Such collectors will contemptuously smile at the collection of the amiable Melancthon. He possessed in his fibrary only four authors, Plato, Pliny, Plutarch, and Ptolemy the geographer.

Ancillon was a great collector of curious books, and dexterously defended himself when accused of the Bibliomania. He gave a good reason for buying the most elegant editions; which he did not consider merely as a literary xury. He said the less the eyes are fatigued in reading a work, the more liberty the mind feels to judge of it: and as we perceive more clearly the excellencies and defects of a printed book than when in Ms; so we see them more plainly in good paper and clear type than when the impression and paper are both bad. He always purchased first editions, and never waited for second ones; though it is the opinion of some that a first edition is generally the least valuable, and only to be considered as an imperfect essay, which the author proposes to finish after he has tried the sentiments of the literary world. Bayle approves of Ancillon's plan. Those who wait calmly for a book, says he, till it is reprinted, show plainly that they are resigned to their ignorance, and prefer the saving of a pistole to the acquisition of useful knowledge. With one of these persons, who waited for a second edi

An allusion and pun which occasioned the French translator of the present work an unlucky blunder: puzzled no doubt by my facetiousness, he translates mettant comme on l'a tres-judicieusement fait observer, l'entendement humain sous la Clef. The book, and the author alluded to, quite sscoped him.

tion, which never appeared, a literary man argued, that it was much better to have two editions of a book than to deprive himself of the advantage which the reading of the first might procure him; and it was a 'bad economy to prefer a few crowns to that advantage. It has frequently happened, besides, that in second editions, the author omits, as well as adds, or makes alterations from prudential reasons; the displeasing truths which he corrects, as he might call them, are so many losses incurred by Truth itself. There is an advantage in comparing the first with subsequent editions; for among other things, we feel great satisfaction in tracing the variations of a work, when a man of genius has revised it. There are also other secrets, well known to the intelligent curious, who are versed in affairs relating to books. Many first editions are not to be Let no lover purchased for the treble value of later ones.

of books be too hastily censured for his passion, which, if he indulges with judgment, is useful. The collector we have noticed frequently said, as is related of Virgil, I collect gold from Ennius's dung.' I find, added he, in some neglected authors, particular things, not elsewhere to be found. He read them, indeed, not with equal attention, but many, Sicut canis ad Nilum bibens et fugiens,' like a dog at the Nile, drinking and running.

Fortunate are those who only consider a book for the utility and pleasure they may derive from its possession. Those students, who, though they know much, still thirst to know more, may require this vast sea of books; yet in that sea they may suffer many shipwrecks. Great collec tions of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats; one not less common is that of the borrowers, not to say a word of the purloiners.

LITERARY JOURNALS.

When writers were not numerous, and readers rare, tho unsuccessful author fell insensibly into oblivion; he dissolved away in his own weakness; if he committed the private folly of printing what no one would purchase, he was not arraigned at the public tribunal-and the awful terrors of his day of judgment consisted only in the retributions of his publisher's final accounts. At length, a taste for literature spread through the body of the people, vanity induced the inexperienced and the ignorant to aspire to literary honours. To oppose these forcible entries into the haunts of the Muses, periodical criticism brandished its formidable weapon; and the fall of many, taught some of our greatest geniuses to rise. Multifarious writings produced multifarious strictures, and public criticism reached to such perfection, that taste was generally diffused, enlightening those whose occupations had otherwise never permitted them to judge of literary compositions.

The invention of Reviews, in the form which they have at length gradually assumed, could not have existed but in the most polished ages of literature; for without a constant supply of authors, and a refined spirit of criticism, they could not excite a perpetual interest among the lovers of literature. These publications are the chronicles of taste and science, and present the existing state of the public mind, while they form a ready resource for those idle hours, which men of letters do not choose to pass idly.

Their multiplicity has undoubtedly produced much evil; puerile critics, and venal drudges, manufacture reviews: hence that shameful discordance of opinion, which is the scorn and scandal of criticism. Passions hostile to the peaceful truths of literature have likewise made tremendous inroads in the republic, and every literary virtue has been lost! In Calamities of Authors,' I have given the history of a literary conspiracy, conducted by a solitary critic Gilbert Stuart, against the historian Henry.

These works may disgust by vapid panegyric, or gross invective; weary by uniform dulness, or tantalize by superficial knowledge. Sometimes merely written to catch the public attention, a malignity is indulged against authors, to season the caustic leaves. A reviewer has admired those works in private, which he has condemned in his official capacity. But good sense, good temper, and good taste, will ever form an estimable journalist, who will inspire confidence, and give stability to his decisions.

To the lovers of literature these volumes when they have outlived their year, are not unimportant. They constitute a great portion of literary history, and are indeed the annals of the republic.

To our own reviews, we must add the old foreign journals, which are perhaps even more valuable to the man of letters. Of these the variety is considerabie; and many

of their writers are now known. They delight our curiosity by opening new views, and light up in observing minds many projects of works, wanted in our own literature. Gibbon feasted on them; and while he turned them over with constant pleasure, derived accurate notions of works, which no student can himself have verified: of many works a notion is sufficient, but this notion is necessary.

The origin of so many literary journals was the happy project of Denis de Sallo, a counsellor in the parliament of Paris. In 1665 appeared his Journal des Scavans. He published his essay in the name of the Sieur de Hedouville, his footman! Was this a mere stroke of humour, or designed to insinuate that the freedom of his criticism could only be allowed to his footman? The work, however, met with so favourable a reception, that Sallo had the satisfaction of seeing it, the following year, imitated throughout Europe, and his journal, at the same time, translated into various languages. But as most authors ay themselves open to an acute critic, the animadversions of Sallo were given with such asperity of criticism, and such malignity of wit, that this new journal excited loud murmurs, and the most heart-moving complaints. The learned had their plagiarisms detected, and the wit had his claims disputed. Sarasin called the gazettes of this new Aristarchus, Hebdomadary Flams! Billevezees hebdomadaries! and Menage, having published a law-book, which Sallo had treated with severe raillery, he entered into a long argument to prove, according to Justinian, that a lawyer is not allowed to defame another lawyer, &c. Senatori maledicere non licet, remaledicere jus fasque est. Others loudly declaimed against this new species of imperial tyranny, and this attempt to regulate the public opinion by that of an individual. Sallo, after having published only his third volume, felt the irritated wasps of literature thronging so thick about him, that he very gladly abdicated the throne of criticism. The journal is said to have suffered a short interruption by a remonstrance from the nuncio of the pope, for the energy with which Sallo had defended the liberties of the Gallican church.

Intimidated by the fate of Sallo, his successor, Abbé Gallois, flourished in a milder reign. He contented himself with giving the titles of books, accompanied with extracts; and he was more useful than interesting. The public, who had been so much amused by the raillery and severity of the founder of this dynasty of new critics, now murmured at the want of that salt and acidity by which they had relished the fugitive collation. They were not satisfied in having the most beautiful, or the most curious parts of a new work brought together; they wished for the unreasonable entertainment of railing and raillery. At length another objection was conjured up against the review; mathematicians complained they were neglected to make room for experiments in natural philosophy; the historian sickened over the works of natural history; the antiquaries would have nothing but discoveries of Mas, or fragments of antiquity. Medical works were called for by one party and reprobated by another. In a word, each reader wished only to have accounts of books which were interesting to his profession or his taste. But a review is a work presented to the public at large, and written for more than one country. In spite of all these difficulties, this work was carried to a vast extent. An inder to the Journal des Sçavans has been arranged on a critical plan, occupying ten volumes in quarto, which may be considered as a most useful instrument to obtain the science and literature of the entire century.

The next celebrated reviewer is Bayle, who undertook, in 1684, his Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres. He possessed the art, acquired by habit, of reading a book by his fingers, as it has been happily expressed; and of comprising, in concise extracts, a just notion of a book, without the addition of irrelevant matter. He had for his day Fufficient playfulness to wreathe the rod of criticism with roses; and, for the first time, the ladies and all the beau monde took an interest in the labours of the critic. Yet even Bayle, who declared himself a reporter and not a judge. Bayle the discreet sceptic, could not long satisfy his readers. His panegyric was thought somewhat prodigal; his fluency of style somewhat too fatniliar; and others affected not to relish his gayety. In his latter volumes, to still the clamour, he assumed the cold sobriety of an historian: and has bequeathed no mean legacy to the literary world, in thirty-six small volumes of criticism, closed in 1687. These were continued by Bernard, with inferior skill: and

by Basnage more successfully in his Histoire des Ouvrages des Sçavans.

The contemporary and the antagonist of Bayle was Le Clerc. His firm industry has produced three Bibliotheques - Universelle et Historique- Choisie- and Ancienne et Moderne, forming in all 82 volumes, which, complete, bear a very high price. Inferior to Bayle in the more pleasing talents, he is perhaps superior in erudition, and shows great skill in analysis: but his hand drops no flowers! Apostolo Zeno's Giornale de' Litterati d'Italia, from 1710 to 1733, is valuable. Gibbon resorted to Le Clerc's volumes at his leisure, as an inexhaustible source of amusement and instruction.'

Beausobre and L'Enfant, two learned Protestants, wrote a Bibliotheque Germanique, from 1720 to 1740, in 50 vols.; our own literature is interested by the Bibliotheque Britannique; written by some literary Frenchmen, noticed by La Croze in his Voyage Litteraire,' who designates the writers in this most tantalizing manner: 'Les auteurs sont gens de merite et que entendent tous parfaitement l'Anglois; Messrs S. B. le M. D. et le savant Mr D.' Posterity has been partially let into the secret; De Missy was one of the contributors, and Warburton communicated his project of an edition of Gelleius Paterculus. This useful account of only English books begins in 1733, and closes at 1747, Hague, 23 vols.; to this we must add the Journal Britannique, in 18 volumes, by Dr Maty, a foreign physician residing in London; this journal exhibits a view of the state of English literature from 1750 to 1755. Gibbon bestows a high character on the journalist, who sometimes aspires to the character of a poet and a philosopher; one of the last disciples of the school of Fontenelle.'

Maty's son produced here a review known to the curi ons; his style and decisions often discover haste and heat, with some striking observations: alluding to his father, Maty, in his motto, applies Virgil's description of the young Ascanius,Sequitur patrem non passibus æquis.' He says he only holds a monthly conversation with the public; but criticism demands more maturity of reflection and more terseness of style. In his obstinate resolution of carrying on this review without an associate, he has shown its folly and its danger; for a fatal illness produced a cessation, at once, of his periodical labours and his life.

Other reviews, are the Memoires de Trevoux, written by the Jesuits. Their caustic censure and vivacity of style made them redoubtable in their day; they did not even spare their brothers. The Journal Litteraire, printed at the Hague, and chiefly composed by Prosper Marchand, Sallengre, Van Effen, who were then young writers. This list may be augmented by other journals, which sometimes merit preservation in the history of modern literature.

Our early English journals notice only a few publications, with but little acumen. Of these, the Memoirs of Literature,' and the Present State of the Republic of Letters,' are the best. The Monthly Review, the venerable mother of our journals, commenced in 1749.

It is impossible to form a literary journal in a manner such as might be wished; it must be the work of many of different tempers and talents. An individual, however versatile and extensive his genius, would soon be exhausted

Such a regular labour occasioned Bayle a dangerous illness, and Maty fell a victim to his review. A prospect always extending as we proceed, the frequent novelty of the matter, the pride of considering one's self as the arbiter of literature, animate a journalist at the commencement of his career; but the literary Hercules becomes fatigued; and to supply his craving pages he gives copious extracts, till the journal becomes tedious, or fails in variety. Abbé Gallois was frequently diverted from continuing his journal, and Fontenelle remarks, that this occupation was too restrictive for a mind so extensive as his; the Abbé could nc. resist the charms of revelling in a new work, and gratifying any sudden curiosity which seized him; which interrupted perpetually that regularity the public expects from a journalist.

To describe the character of a perfect journalist, would be only an ideal portrait! There are however some ac quirements which are indispensable. He must be tolerably acquainted with the subjects he treats on; no common acquirement! He must possess the literary history of his own times! a science which Fontenelle observes, is almost distinct from any other. It is the result of an active curi osity, which leads us to take a lively interest in the tastes

and pursuits of the age, while it saves the journalist from some ridiculous blunders. We often see the mind of a reviewer half a century remote from the work reviewed. A fine feeling, of the various manners of writers, with a style, adapted to fix the attention of the indolent, and to win the untractable; but candour is the brigthest gem of criticism! He ought not to throw every thing into the crucible, nor should he suffer the whole to pass as if he trembled to touch it. Lampoons, and satires, in time will ose their effect, as well as panegyrics. He must learn to resist the seductions of his own pen; the pretensions of composing a treatise on the subject, rather than on the book he criticises, proud of insinuating that he gives in a aozen pages, what the author himself has not been able to perform in his volumes. Should he gain confidence by a popular delusion and by unworthy conduct, he may chance to be mortified by the pardon or the chastisement of insulted genius. The most noble criticism is that, in which the critic is not the antagonist so much as the rival of the author.

RECOVERY OF MANUSCRIPTS.

Our ancient classics had a very narrow escape from total annihilation. Many, we know, have perished: many we possess are but fragments; and chance, blind arbiter of the works of genius, has given us some, not of the highest value: which, however, have proved very useful, serving as a test to show the pedantry of those who adore antiquity not from true feeling but from traditional prejudice. One reason, writes the learned compiler L'Esprit des Croisades, why we have lost a great number of ancient authors, was the conquest of Egypt by the Saracens, which deprived Europe of the use of the papyrus. The ignorance of that age could find no substitute; they knew no other expedient but writing on parchment, which became every day more scarce and costly. Ignorance and barbarism unfortunately seized on Roman manuscripts, and industriously defaced pages once imagined to have been immortal! The most elegant compositions of classic Rome were converted into the psalms of a breviary, or the prayers of a missal. Livy and Tacitus 'hide their diminished heads' to preserve the legend of a saint, and immortal truths were converted into clumsy fictions. It happened that the most voluminous authors were the greatest sufferers; these were preferred, because their volume being the greatest, it most profitably repaid their destroying industry, and furnished ampler scope for future transcription. A Livy or a Diodorus was preferred to the smaller works of Cicero or Horace; and it is to this circumstance that Juvenal, Persius, and Martial have come down to us entire, rather probably than to these pious personages preferring their obscenities, as some have accused them. Not long ago at Rome, a part of a book of Livy was found, between the lines of a parchment but half effaced, on which they substituted a book of the Bible.

That, however, the monks had not in high veneration the profane authors, appears by a facetious anecdote. To read the classics was considered as a very idle recreation, and some beld them in great horror. To distinguish them from other books, they invented a disgraceful sign: when a monk asked for a pagan author, after making the general sign they used in their manual and silent language when they wanted a book, he added a particular one which consisted in scratching under his ear, as a dog, which feels an itching, scratches himself in that place with his paw-because, said they, an unbeliever is compared to a dog! In this manner they exp essed an itching for those dogs, Virgil or Horace!

There have been ages when for the possession of a manuscript, some would transfer an estate; or leave in pawn for its loan hundreds of golden crowns; and when even the sale or loan of a manuscript was considered of such importance as to have been solemnly registered in public acts. Absolute as was Louis XI, he could not obtain the Ms of Rasis, an Arabian writer, to make a copy, from the library of the faculty of Paris, without pledging a hundred golden crowns; and the president of his treasury, charged with this commission, sold part of his plate to make the deposit. For the loan of a volume of Avicenna, a baron offered a pledge of ten marks of silver, which was refused: because it was not considered equal to the risk mcurred of losing a volume of Avicenna! These events occurred in 1471. One cannot but smile at an anterior period, when a countess of Anjou bought a favourite book at homilies, for two hundred sheep, some skins of martins, ani bushels of wheat and rye.

In these times, manuscripts were important articles of commerce; they were excessively scarce, and preserved with the utmost care. Usurers themselves considered them as precious objects for pawn; a student of Pavia, who was reduced by his debaucheries, raised a new for tune by leaving in pawn a manuscript of a body of law; and a grammarian, who was ruined by a fire, rebuilt his house with two small volumes of Cicero.

At the restoration of letters, the researches of literary men were chiefly directed to this point; every part of Europe and Greece was ransacked, and the glorious end considered, there was something sublime in this humbie indus try, which often produced a lost author of antiquity, and gave one more classic to the world. This occupation was carried on with enthusiasm, and a kind of mania possessed many who exhausted their fortunes in distant voyages, and profuse prices. In reading the correspondence of the learned Italians of these times, much of which has descended to us, their adventures of manuscript-hunting are very amusing, and their raptures, their congratulations, or at times their condolence, and even their censures, are all immoderate and excessive. The acquisition of a province would not have given so much satisfaction as the discovery of an author little known, or not known at all. 'Oh, great gain! Oh, unexpected felicity! I intreat you my Poggio, send me the manuscript as soon as possible, that I may see it before I die!' exclaims Aretino, in a letter overflowing with enthusiasm, on Poggio's discovery of a copy of Quintilian. Some of the half-witted, who joined in this great hunt, were often thrown out, and some paid high for manuscripts not authentic; the knave played on the bungling amateur of manuscripts, whose credulity was greater than his purse. But even among the learned, much ill blood was inflamed: he who had been most successful in acquiring manuscripts was envied by the less fortunate, and the glory of possessing a manuscript of Cicero, seemed to approximate to that of being its author. It is curious to observe that in these vast importations into Italy of manuscripts from Asia, John Aurispa, who brought many hundreds of Greek manuscripts, laments that he had chosen more profane than sacred writers; which circumstance he tells us was owing to the Greeks, who would not so easily part with theological works, but they did not highly value profane writers!

These manuscripts were discovered in the obscurest recesses of monasteries; they were not always imprisoned in libraries, but rotting in oblivion: in dark unfrequented corners with rubbish. It required no less ingenuity to find out places where to examine, than to understand the value of the acquisition, when obtained. An universal ignorance then prevailed in the knowledge of ancient writers. A scholar of those times gave the first rank among the Latin writers to one Valerius, whether he meant Martial or Maximus is uncertain; he placed Plato and Tully among the poets, and imagined that Ennius and Statius were contemporaries. A library of six hundred volumes was then considered as an extraordinary collection.

Among those whose lives were devoted to this purpose, Poggio the Florentine stands distinguished; but he complains that his zeal was not assisted by the great. He found under a heap of rubbish in a decayed coffer, in a tower belonging to the monastery of St Gallo, the work of Quintilian. He is indignant at its forlorn situation; at least, he cries, it should have been preserved in the library of the monks; but I found it in teterrimo quodam et obscurt carcere and to his great joy drew it out of its grave! The monks have been complimented as the preservers of literature, but by facts like the present, their real affection may be doubted.

The most valuable copy of Tacitus, of whom so much is wanting, was likewise discovered in a monastery of Westphalia. It is a curious circumstance in literary history, that we should owe Tacitus to this single copy; for the Roman emperor of that name had copies of the works of his illustrious ancestor placed in all the libraries of the empire, and every year had ten copies transcribed; but the Roman libraries seem to have been all destroyed, and the imperial protection availed nothing against the teeth of time.

The original manuscript of Justinian's code was discovered by the Pisans, accidentally, when they took a city in Calabria; that vast code of laws had been in a manner unknown from the time of that emperor. This curious book was brought to Pisa, and when Pisa was taken by the Florentines, was transferred to Florence, where it is still preserved.

It sometimes happened that manuscripts were discovered in the last agonies of existence. Papirius Masson found, in the house of a book-binder of Lyons, the works of Agobart; the mechanic was on the point of using the manuscripts to line the covers of his books. A page of the second decade of Livy it is said was found by a man of letters in the parchment of his battledore, while he was amusing himself in the country. He hastened to the maker of the battledore-but arrived too late! The man had finished the last page of Livy-about a week before!

Many works have undoubtedly perished in this manuscript state. By a petition of Dr Dee to Queen Mary, in the Cotton library, it appears that Cicero's treatise de Republica was once extant in this country. Huet observes that Petronius was probably entire in the days of John of Salisbury, who quotes fragments, not now to be found in the remains of the Roman bard. Raimond Soranzo, a lawyer in the papal court, possessed two books of Cicero on Glory, which he presented to Petrarch, who lent them to a poor aged man of letters, formerly his preceptor. Urged by extreme want, the old man pawned them, and returning home died suddenly without having revealed where he had left them. They have never been recovered. Petrarch speaks of them with ecstasy, and tells us that he had studied them perpetually. Two centuries afterwards this treatise on Glory by Cicero was mentioned in a catalogue of books bequeathed to a monastery of nuns, but when inquired after was missing; it was supposed that Petrus Alcyonius, physician to that household, purloined it, and after transcribing as much of it as he could into his own writings, had destroyed the original. Alcyonius in his book de Exilio, the critics observed, had many splendid passages which stood isolated in his work, and were quite above his genius. The beggar, or inthis case the thief, was detected by mending his rags with patches of purple and gold.

In this age of manuscript, there is reason to believe, that when a man of letters accidentally obtained an unknown work, he did not make the fairest use of it, and cautiously concealed it from his contemporaries. Leonard Aretino, a distinguished scholar at the dawn of modern literature, having found a Greek manuscript of Procopius de Bello Gothico, translated it into Latin, and published the work, but concealing the author's name, it passed as his own, till another manuscript of the same work being dug out of its grave, the fraud of Aretino was apparent. Barbosa, a bishop of Ugento, in 1649, has printed among his works a treatise, which, it is said, he obtained by having perceived one of his domestics bringing in a fish rolled in a leaf of written paper, which his curiosity led him to examine. He was sufficiently interested to run out and search the fish market, till he found the manuscript out of which it had been torn. He published it under the title de Officio Episcopi. Machiavelli acted more adroitly in a similar case; a manuscript of the Apophthegms of the ancients by Plutarch having fallen into his hands, he selected those which pleased him the best, and put them into the mouth of his hero Castrucio Castricani.

In more recent times, we might collect many curious anecdotes concerning manuscripts. Sir Robert Cotton one day at his tailor's, discovered that the man was holding in his hand, ready to cut up for measures-an orignal Magna Charta, with all its appendages of seals and signatures. He bought the singular curiosity for a trifle, and recovered in this manner what had long been given over for lost! This anecdote is told by Colomiés, who long resided, and died in this country. An original Magna Charta is preserved in the Cottonian library; it exhibits marks of dilapidation, but whether from the invisible scythe of time, or the humble scissors of a tailor, I leave to archaiological inquiry.

Cardinal Granvelle carefully preserved all his letters; he left behind him several chests filled with a prodigious quantity, written in different languages, commented, noted, and under-lined by his own hand. These curious manuscripts, after his death, were left in a garret to the mercy of the rain and the rats. Five or six of these chests the steward sold to the grocers. It was then that a discovery was made of this treasure. Several learned men occupied themselves in collecting as many of these literary relics as they possibly could. What were saved formed eighty thick folios. Among these original letters, are found great numbers written by almost all the crowned heads in Europe, with instructions for ambassadors, and many other state-papers.

Recently a valuable secret history by Sir George Mackenzie, the king's advocate in Scotland, has been rescued from a mass of waste paper sold to a grocer, who had the good sense to discriminate it, and communicate this curious memorial to Dr M'Crie; the original, in the handwriting of its author, has been deposited in the advocates' library. There is an hiatus, which contained the history of six years. This work excited inquiry after the rest of the Mss, which were found to be nothing more than the sweepings of an attorney's office.

Montaigne's journal of his travels into Italy have been but recently published. A prebendary of Perigord, travelling through this province to make researches relative to its history, arrived at the ancient chateau of Montaigne, m possession of a descendant of this great man. He inquired for the archives, if there had been any. He was shown an old worm-eaten coffer, which had long held papers untouched by the incurious generations of Montaigne. The prebendary, with philosophical intrepidity, stifled himself in clouds of dust, and at length drew out the original manuscript of the travels of Montaigne. Two thirds of the work are in the hand-writing of Montaigne, and the rest is written by a servant who served as his secretary, and who always speaks of his master in the third person. But he must have written what Montaigne dictated, as the expressions and the egotisms are all Montaigne's. The bad writing and orthography made it almost unintelligible. It proves also, says the editor, how true is Montaigne's observation, that he was very negligent in the corrrection of

his works.

Our ancestors were great hiders of manuscripts; Dr Dee's singular Mss were found in the secret drawer of a chest, which had passed through many hands undiscovered; and that vast collection of state-papers of Thurloe's the secretary of Cromwell, which formed about seventy volumes in the original manuscripts, accidentally fell out of the false ceiling of some chambers in Lincoln's-Inn.

A considerable portion of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's letters I discovered in the hands of an attorney. There are now many valuable manuscripts in the family papers of the descendants of celebrated persons; but posthumous publications of this kind are usually made from the most sordid motives: discernment, and taste, would only be detrimental to the views of bulky publishers.

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It was given out, that Homer had stolen from anterior poets whatever was most remarkable in the Iliad and Odyssey. Naucrates even points out the source in the library at Memphis in a temple of Vulcan, which according to him the blind bard completely pillaged. Undoubt edly there were good poets before Homer; how absurd to conceive that a finished and elaborate poem could be the first! We have indeed accounts of anterior poets, and apparently of epics, before Homer; their names have come down to us. Aelian notices Syagrus, who composed a poem on the Siege of Troy; and Suidas the poem of Corinnus, from which it is said Homer greatly borrowed. Why did Plato so severely condemn the great bard, and imitate him?

Sophocles was brought to trial by his children as a lunatic; and some, who censured the inequalities of this poet, have also condemned the vanity of Pindar; the rough verses of schylus; and Euripides, for the conduct of his plots.

Socrates, considered as the wisest and the most moral of men, Cicero treated as an usurer, and the pedant Athe næus as illiterate; the latter points out as a Socratic folly, our philosopher disserting on the nature of justice before his judges, who were so many thieves. The malignant buffoonery of Aristophanes, who, as Jortin says, was a great wit, but a great rascal, treats him much worse; but though some would revive this calumny, such modern wit nesses may have their evidence impeached in the awful court of history.

Plato, who has been called, by Clement of Alexandria, the Moses of Athens; the philosopher of the Christians by Arnobius; and the god of philosophers, by Cicero Athenæus accuses of envy; Theopompus, of Lying; Sui

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