lue profane writers!

These manuscripts were discovered in the obscurest recesses of
monasteries; they were not always imprisoned in libraries, but rotting
in dark unfrequented corners with rubbish. It required not less
ingenuity to find out places where to grope in, than to understand the
value of the acquisition. 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 obscuro 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 Pandects was discovered by the
Pisans, 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
bookbinder of Lyons, the works of Agobard; the mechanic was on the point
of using the manuscripts to line t