n coffer, which had long held papers untouched by the incurious
generations of Montaigne. Stifled in clouds of dust, he drew out the
original manuscript of the travels of Montaigne. Two-thirds of the work
are in the handwriting of Montaigne, and the rest is written by a
servant, 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. They confirmed Montaigne's own observation, that
he was very negligent in the correction 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: family-papers are often
consigned to offices of lawyers, where many valuable manuscripts are
buried. Posthumous publications of this kind are too frequently made
from sordid motives: discernment and taste would only be detrimental to
the views of bulky publishers.[17]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 13: This important political treatise was discovered in the
year 1823, by Angelo Maii, in the library of the Vatican. A treatise on
the Psalms covered it. This second treatise was written in the clear,
minute character of the middle ages, but beneath it Maii saw distinct
traces of the larger letters of the work of Cicero; and to the infinite
joy of the learned succeeded in restoring to the world one of the most
important works of the great orator.]

[Footnote 14: "Many bishops and abbots began to consider learning as
pernicious to true piety, and confounded illiberal ignorance with
Christian simplicity," says Warton. The study of Pagan authors was
declared to inculcate Paganism; the same sort of reasoning led others to
say that the reading of the Scriptures would infallibly change the
readers to Jews; it is amusing to look back on these vain efforts to
stop the effect of the printing-press.]

[Footnote 15: Agobard was Archbishop of Lyons, and one of the most
learned men of the ninth century. He was born in 779; raised to the
prelacy in 816, fro