where pointed
out,(2) Italy, the centre of western civilization, was at this time
impoverished, and hence could not provide the monetary stimulus so
essential to artistic and scientific no less than to material progress.
There were no patrons of science and literature such as the Ptolemies of
that elder Alexandrian day. There were no great libraries; no colleges
to supply opportunities and afford stimuli to the rising generation.
Worst of all, it became increasingly difficult to secure books.

This phase of the subject is often overlooked. Yet a moment's
consideration will show its importance. How should we fare to-day if no
new scientific books were being produced, and if the records of former
generations were destroyed? That is what actually happened in
Europe during the Middle Ages. At an earlier day books were made and
distributed much more abundantly than is sometimes supposed. Bookmaking
had, indeed, been an important profession in Rome, the actual makers of
books being slaves who worked under the direction of a publisher. It was
through the efforts of these workers that the classical works in Greek
and Latin were multiplied and disseminated. Unfortunately the climate of
Europe does not conduce to the indefinite preservation of a book;
hence very few remnants of classical works have come down to us in the
original from a remote period. The rare exceptions are certain papyrus
fragments, found in Egypt, some of which are Greek manuscripts dating
from the third century B.C. Even from these sources the output is
meagre; and the only other repository of classical books is a single
room in the buried city of Herculaneum, which contained several hundred
manuscripts, mostly in a charred condition, a considerable number of
which, however, have been unrolled and found more or less legible. This
library in the buried city was chiefly made up of philosophical works,
some of which were quite unknown to the modern world until discovered
there.

But this find, interesting as it was from an archaeological stand-point,
had no very important bearing on our knowledge of the literature of
antiquity. Our chief dependence for our knowledge of that literature
must still be placed in such copies of books as were made in the
successive generations. Comparatively few of the extant manuscripts are
older than the tenth century of our era. It requires but a momentary
consideration of the conditions under which ancient books were produced
to