70 
MEMOTR 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 been 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- 
