enth book. The
books of Aristotle came from his scholar Theophrastus to Neleus, whose
posterity, an illiterate race, kept them locked up without using them,
buried in the earth! Apellion, a curious collector, purchased them, but
finding the MSS. injured by age and moisture, conjecturally supplied
their deficiencies. It is impossible to know how far Apellion has
corrupted and obscured the text. But the mischief did not end here; when
Sylla at the taking of Athens brought them to Rome, he consigned them
to the care of Tyrannio, a grammarian, who employed scribes to copy
them; he suffered them to pass through his hands without correction, and
took great freedoms with them; the words of Strabo are strong: "Ibique
Tyrannionem grammaticum iis usum atque (ut fama est) _intercidisse_, aut
_invertisse_." He gives it indeed as a report; but the fact seems
confirmed by the state in which we find these works: Averroes declared
that he read Aristotle forty times over before he succeeded in perfectly
understanding him; he pretends he did at the one-and-fortieth time! And
to prove this, has published five folios of commentary!

We have lost much valuable literature by the illiberal or malignant
descendants of learned and ingenious persons. Many of Lady Mary Wortley
Montague's letters have been destroyed, I am informed, by her daughter,
who imagined that the family honours were lowered by the addition of
those of literature: some of her best letters, recently published, were
found buried in an old trunk. It would have mortified her ladyship's
daughter to have heard, that her mother was the Sevigne of Britain.

At the death of the learned Peiresc, a chamber in his house filled with
letters from the most eminent scholars of the age was discovered: the
learned in Europe had addressed Peiresc in their difficulties, who was
hence called "the attorney-general of the republic of letters." The
niggardly niece, although repeatedly entreated to permit them to be
published, preferred to use these learned epistles occasionally to light
her fires![24]

The MSS. of Leonardo da Vinci have equally suffered from his relatives.
When a curious collector discovered some, he generously brought them to
a descendant of the great painter, who coldly observed, that "he had a
great deal more in the garret, which had lain there for many years, if
the rats had not destroyed them!" Nothing which this great artist wrote
but showed an inventive genius.

Menage o