bserves on a friend having had his library destroyed by fire, in
which several valuable MSS. had perished, that such a loss is one of the
greatest misfortunes that can happen to a man of letters. This gentleman
afterwards consoled himself by composing a little treatise _De
Bibliothecae incendio_. It must have been sufficiently curious. Even in
the present day men of letters are subject to similar misfortunes; for
though the fire-offices will insure books, they will not allow _authors
to value their own manuscripts_.

A fire in the Cottonian library shrivelled and destroyed many
Anglo-Saxon MSS.--a loss now irreparable. The antiquary is doomed to
spell hard and hardly at the baked fragments that crumble in his
hand.[25]

Meninsky's famous Persian dictionary met with a sad fate. Its excessive
rarity is owing to the siege of Vienna by the Turks: a bomb fell on the
author's house, and consumed the principal part of his indefatigable
labours. There are few sets of this high-priced work which do not bear
evident proofs of the bomb; while many parts are stained with the water
sent to quench the flames.

The sufferings of an author for the loss of his manuscripts strongly
appear in the case of Anthony Urceus, a great scholar of the fifteenth
century. The loss of his papers seems immediately to have been followed
by madness. At Forli, he had an apartment in the palace, and had
prepared an important work for publication. His room was dark, and he
generally wrote by lamp-light. Having gone out, he left the lamp
burning; the papers soon kindled, and his library was reduced to ashes.
As soon as he heard the news, he ran furiously to the palace, and
knocking his head violently against the gate, uttered this blasphemous
language: "Jesus Christ, what great crime have I done! who of those who
believed in you have I ever treated so cruelly? Hear what I am saying,
for I am in earnest, and am resolved. If by chance I should be so weak
as to address myself to you at the point of death, don't hear me, for I
will not be with you, but prefer hell and its eternity of torments." To
which, by the by, he gave little credit. Those who heard these ravings,
vainly tried to console him. He quitted the town, and lived franticly,
wandering about the woods!

Ben Jonson's _Execration on Vulcan_ was composed on a like occasion; the
fruits of twenty years' study were consumed in one short hour; our
literature suffered, for among some works of imaginatio