al rules in painting and in sculpture; they learned how to cut
the marble and to blend the colours, but their own genius taught them
how to animate the block and vivify the image. We have seen already,
that before this event, art had attained to a certain eminence among
the Greeks--fortunately, therefore, what they now acquired was not the
foundation of their lore. Grafted on a Grecian stock, every shoot
bore Grecian fruit: and what was borrowed from mechanism was
reproduced in beauty [184]. As with the arts, so with the SCIENCES;
we have reason to doubt whether the Egyptian sages, whose minds were
swathed and bandaged in the cerements of hereditary rules, never to
swell out of the slavery of castes, had any very sound and enlightened
philosophy to communicate: their wisdom was probably exaggerated by
the lively and credulous Greeks, awed by the mysticism of the priests,
the grandeur of the cities, the very rigidity, so novel to them, of
imposing and antique custom. What, then, was the real benefit of the
intercourse? Not so much in satisfying as in arousing and stimulating
the curiosity of knowledge. Egypt, to the Greeks, was as America to
Europe--the Egyptians taught them little, but Egypt much. And that
what the Egyptians did directly communicate was rather the material
for improvement than the improvement itself, this one gift is an
individual example and a general type;--the Egyptians imparted to the
Greeks the use of the papyrus--the most easy and popular material for
writing; we are thus indebted to Egypt for a contrivance that has done
much to preserve to us--much, perhaps, to create for us--a Plato and
an Aristotle; but for the thoughts of Aristotle and Plato we are
indebted to Greece alone:--the material Egyptian--the manufacture
Greek.

XI. The use of the papyrus had undoubtedly much effect upon the
formation of prose composition in Greece, but it was by no means an
instantaneous one. At the period on which we now enter (about B. C.
600), the first recorded prose Grecian writer had not composed his
works. The wide interval between prose in its commencement and poetry
in its perfection is peculiarly Grecian; many causes conspired to
produce it, but the principal one was, that works, if written, being
not the less composed to be recited, not read--were composed to
interest and delight, rather than formally to instruct. Poetry was,
therefore, so obviously the best means to secure the end of the
autho