70 MEMOIR OF ARISTOTLE. 



forgotten. At length, after the lapse of 130 years, 

 and when all hope of their ever seeing the light must 

 have vanished, vanity and avarice accomplished what 

 a nobler motive ought to have done. Apellicon, a 

 rich disciple of the Peripatetic school, whose name 

 has heen already mentioned, while residing at Athens, 

 had turned his attention to the collecting of books ; 

 and although a " bibliosophist rather than a philoso- 

 pher," (as Strabo calls him), he courted the ostenta- 

 tion of scholarship, by ordering them to be pur- 

 chased at the dearest rate. The " witless felons of 

 philosophy" at Scepsis heard of his premiums and 

 opened their vault. The volumes of Aristotle and 

 his illustrious successor were thus released from pri- 

 son, or rather dug from the grave, and, with all the 

 injuries of moths and mouldering upon them, sold 

 for a large sum, and carried back to the city where 

 they had been originally written. Their new owner 

 was at the expense of employing a number of copy- 

 ists to transcribe them, himself superintending the 

 task. The work of restoring them was very imper- 

 fectly executed, and this must be attributed not only 

 to the ignorance of the transcribers, but to the tat- 

 tered condition of the manuscripts, and the abstruse 

 nature of the subjects. The most considerable part 

 of his Acroatic works, which are almost the whole 

 of those now remaining, consist of little else than 

 text-books, containing the detached heads of his 

 discourses ; and from a want of connexion in the 

 matter, they have been exposed to additional cor- 



