MEMOIR OF ARISTOTLE. 69 



stance, the occasion of serious misfortune. The 

 Scepsions on hearing that Eumenes, king of Perga- 

 mus, in whose dominions they lived, was making ex- 

 tensive researches with the view of forming a large 

 library, resorted to a selfish expedient for securing 

 their literary property from the rapacious hands of 

 their sovereign. With the caution incident to the 

 subjects of a despot, who often have recourse to con- 

 cealment in order to avoid robbery, they hid the 

 books under ground ; and in this subterranean ce- 

 metery the writings of Aristotle, as well as the vast 

 collection of materials from which they had been 

 composed, lay buried for many generations, a prey to 

 dampness and worms. Some authors, such as Bayle 

 and Patricius, allege that Neleus sold the original 

 works and the whole library to Ptolemy Philadel- 

 phus of Egypt, after having transcribed them ; and 

 that it was only the copies and not the originals that 

 vere exposed to the unworthy fate of rotting in a 

 humid cell. But the supposition is altogether im- 

 probable. On the one hand it is hardly credible thai 

 so many thousand volumes could have been tran- 

 scribed in so short a time ; and on the other, it is 

 reasonable to believe that the philosophy of the Ly- 

 caeum would have struck deeper root and mace 

 greater progress in the Egyptian capital than it ever 

 did, had the genuine works of the Stagirite adorned 

 the library of Alexandria, under the first Ptolemies. 

 In their catacomb at Scepsis, the manuscripts re- 

 mained until their very existence seems to have been 



