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 
were 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 that 
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 made 
greater progress in the Egyptian capital than it ever 
did, bad 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 
