Heradaneum Manuscripts. 183 



period, if we except Tacitus, whose inestimable works were 

 unfortunatelv not composed till twenty years afterwards, 

 dannv>; the reign of Trajan. 



'* Nor can it be imagined for a moment, that among five 

 or six hundred manuscripts, already excavated, and cspe- 

 ciallv from the numberless ones which further excavations 

 may supply, lost at such a period in two of the most capital 

 cities, in the richest, most frequented, and most learned 

 province in Italy, each of them an established seat of tha 

 arts and sciences, each of them the resort of the most di- 

 stinguished Romans, not any part of those illustrious au- 

 thors should be discovered. 



" But the nianuseript of Philodemus itself makes the 

 reverse of such an idea appear much more probable. To 

 the moderns, who have 



" Untwisted all the chains that tie 

 The hidden soul of harmony," 



his Treatise on Music cannot, indeed, be supposed to com- 

 municate much information ; yet the subject is scientific, 

 and scicntificallv treated. The author himself, too, was one 

 of the most eminent men in his time for wit, learning, and 

 philosophy. But in the rest of the arts* and sciences, in 

 history, in poetry, the discovery of any lost writer, either 

 in whole or part, would be deemed a most valuable acqui- 

 bition and treasure, and form a new cera in literature. 



*' It is cxtremelv fortunate that the characters t of these 

 manuscripts, whetiier I hey should be Greek or Latin, must 

 be very obvious and legible. Before the year of our Lord 79, 

 and some time after it, the Majusculns or Unciales Litterje, 

 capital letters, were solely used. A page, therefore, in one 

 of these manuscripts, woidd present to your roval highness 

 an exact imasre ol some mutilated inscription in those lan- 

 guages on an antient column, statue, or sepulchre. 



" There cannot remain a doubt, even omitting the as- 

 surances from men of official situation to that efTcct, that 

 your roval highness's superintend ant will receive every pos- 

 sible assistance from the marquis del Vasto ; and in that 

 case it seems improbable that the object of this mission can 

 be altogether fruitless. 



*' With such a termination of it, however, your royal 



"* Particularly the antient mode of ctmenuiig in architectvire, and on 

 proportions in sculpture and painting. 



t One of the principal difficulties in copying these mnnuscripts ap- 

 pears to conii;,t in iupplying the proper letters or words at the different 

 (liasms. 



M 4 highness. 



