or titles, of
which two only (of embassies, and of virtues and vices) have escaped
the injuries of time. In every station, the reader might contemplate the
image of the past world, apply the lesson or warning of each page, and
learn to admire, perhaps to imitate, the examples of a brighter period.
I shall not expatiate on the works of the Byzantine Greeks, who, by the
assiduous study of the ancients, have deserved, in some measure, the
remembrance and gratitude of the moderns. The scholars of the present
age may still enjoy the benefit of the philosophical commonplace book of
Stobaeus, the grammatical and historical lexicon of Suidas, the Chiliads
of Tzetzes, which comprise six hundred narratives in twelve thousand
verses, and the commentaries on Homer of Eustathius, archbishop of
Thessalonica, who, from his horn of plenty, has poured the names and
authorities of four hundred writers. From these originals, and from the
numerous tribe of scholiasts and critics, some estimate may be formed
of the literary wealth of the twelfth century: Constantinople was
enlightened by the genius of Homer and Demosthenes, of Aristotle and
Plato: and in the enjoyment or neglect of our present riches, we must
envy the generation that could still peruse the history of Theopompus,
the orations of Hyperides, the comedies of Menander, and the odes of
Alcaeus and Sappho. The frequent labor of illustration attests not only
the existence, but the popularity, of the Grecian classics: the general
knowledge of the age may be deduced from the example of two learned
females, the empress Eudocia, and the princess Anna Comnena, who
cultivated, in the purple, the arts of rhetoric and philosophy. The
vulgar dialect of the city was gross and barbarous: a more correct
and elaborate style distinguished the discourse, or at least the
compositions, of the church and palace, which sometimes affected to copy
the purity of the Attic models.

In our modern education, the painful though necessary attainment of two
languages, which are no longer living, may consume the time and damp
the ardor of the youthful student. The poets and orators were long
imprisoned in the barbarous dialects of our Western ancestors, devoid
of harmony or grace; and their genius, without precept or example, was
abandoned to the rule and native powers of their judgment and fancy. But
the Greeks of Constantinople, after purging away the impurities of their
vulgar speech, acquired the free use