THE MUSEUM. 101 



autograph editions of their dramatists to one of the 

 Ptolemies, and saw them no more. It was even said 

 that philosophers were sometimes detained in the 

 same manner. 



Soon after the wars of Alexander, the " barbarians" 

 were seized with a desire to make known to their 

 conquerors the history of their native lands. Berosus, 

 a priest of Babylon, compiled a history of Chaldsea ; 

 Menander, the Phoenician, a history of Tyre ; and 

 Manetho wrote in Greek, but from Egyptian sources, 

 a history which Egyptology has confirmed. It was at 

 the Museum also that the Old Testament was trans- 

 lated under royal patronage into Greek, and at the 

 same time the Zoroastrian Bible, or Avesta Zend. 



There was some good work clone at the Museum. 

 Among works of imagination, the pastorals of Theo- 

 critus have alone obtained the approbation of posterity. 

 But it was in Alexandria that the immortal works of 

 the preceding ages were edited and arranged, and it 

 was there that language was first studied for itself, 

 that lexicons and grammars were first compiled. It 

 was only in the Museum that anatomists could some- 

 times obtain the corpse of a criminal to dissect ; else- 

 where they were forced to content themselves with 

 monkeys. There Eratosthenes, the Inspector of the 

 Earth, elevated geography to a science, and Euclid 

 produced that work, which, as Macaulay would say, 

 " every schoolboy knows." There the stars were care- 

 fully catalogued and mapped, and chemical experiments 

 were made. Expeditions were sent to Abyssinia to 

 ascertain the causes of the inundation of the Nile. 

 The Greek intellect had hitherto despised the realities 

 of life : it had been considered by Plato unworthy of 

 a mathematician to apply his knowledge to so vulgar 



