BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 61 



in the name of the Chaldseans, disputes their 

 literary priority with the Canaanites on the 

 most futile subjects ; thorough and engross- 

 ing national vanity throws an insipid air 

 over the whole work. I am willing to 

 admit that this disease is a very old one in 

 the world ; bnt it betrays itself, with art- 

 lessness, in truly ancient works ; while here 

 it is absurdly paraded, as in Sanchoniathon 

 and other writings of this intermediate age, 

 when the East was brought into contact 

 with Greece. " The Book of Nabatheean 

 Agriculture " thus appears to me to be im- 

 bued with all the blemishes which afflicted 

 the human intellect towards the third and 

 fourth centuries : charlatanism, astrology, 

 sorcery, and a taste for the apocryphal. 

 It is very far removed from Greek science 

 of the period of Alexander, so free from 

 all superstition, so fixed in method, so 

 infinitely beyond all those idle chimeras 

 which afterwards led astray and retarded 

 the scientific progress of the mind for 

 nearly sixteen centuries. 



