ARISTOTLE. 99 



derived materials for the new species of intellectual repast demanded 

 by the taste of their times. In the first generation of compilations Compiia- 

 which were composed for this purpose, the writers of course made tlc 

 use of the existing sources of information, and fortified their statements 

 by citations of their authority in each particular instance. But as the 

 real love for literature declined before the debilitating influence of 

 luxury, while at the same time the fashion of literary accomplishments 

 remained, it became necessary that information should be furnished in 

 a more generally palatable form. Hence, out of the first crop of com- 

 pilations, a new generation of writers composed a sort of Omniana, Miscellanies. 

 (TravTo^aTrai loropicu,) a species of composition which became exceed- 

 ingly popular as it combined a loose kind of information on those 

 points of which everybody was expected to possess some knowledge, 

 with the piquancy of memoirs, and the variety of subject which is so 

 pleasant to a frivolous and indolent reader. It very soon overlaid and 

 destroyed the learned labours of the preceding age ; and from the time 

 at which it began to prevail, it becomes very questionable whether a 

 writer, when he quotes an authority of a date earlier than the empire, 

 ever has cast eyes upon him, or even wishes his readers to believe 

 that he has done so. One of the earliest as well as most original 

 works of this description was the production of a female hand. 

 Pamphila, a lady of Egyptian extraction, in the time of Nero, had Pampluia. 

 married at a very early age a person of considerable literary tastes and 

 attainments, whose house was the resort of many persons distinguished 

 for the same, either for the purposes of education or of social inter- 

 course. During thirteen years she states that she was never separated 

 from her husband's side for an hour, and that it was her habit to take 

 notes of anything which she might learn either from him or from any 

 of his literary circle, which appeared worth recording. Out of these 

 materials, together with extracts made by herself from authors which 

 she had read, she composed eight books of miscellaneous historical 

 memoirs (arvpp,tKra iffropiKa vTro^uvj^uara), purposely abstaining from 

 anything like an arrangement according to subjects, that her readers 

 might enjoy the pleasure arising from the variety. This work Photius, 

 from whom we have taken this notice of it, describes as being " a 

 most useful one for the acquirement of general information." 1 



Phavorinus, a native of Aries, who flourished in the reign of the Phavorinus. 



were collected, and the arrangement, description, and illustration of these became 

 the principal business of men of letters under his successors. Under Ptolemy the 

 accumulation was so rapid that there was no time for this. Galen relates that 

 when any merchant-vessels put into the harbours of Egypt, all manuscripts which 

 happened to be on board were taken to the royal library, and transcripts of them 

 sent back to the owners. In default of time to examine what the originals were, 

 they were laid up in the collection under the title of ra. ix vrXoiuv, " the books taken 

 out of the ships." (Galen, cited by Wolf, Proleg. sec. 42.) It is hardly necessary 

 to remark that the word " volume," in reference to this time, applies to the pa- 

 pyrus rolls, of which none perhaps contained more than a couple of closely printed 

 octavo sheets, while some were very much less. 

 1 Photius, Biblioth. p. 119, ed. Bekker. 



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