72 
. MEMOIR OF ARISTOTLE. 
them double that amount), only forty-eight have 
been transmitted to the present age. But many of 
these last consist of several books ; and, according 
to the estimate of the laborious Fabricius, the whole 
of these remains, taken together, form a golden 
stream of Greek erudition, exceeding four times the 
collective bulk of the Iliad and Odyssey*. 
Though the works edited by Andronicus had suf- 
fered injuries which the utmost diligence and saga- 
city could not completely repair, yet, in consequence 
of those labours, the Peripatetic philosophy began 
to resume the lustre of which it bad been deprived 
since the days of Theophrastus. In the Lycatum, 
the precepts of the sect were preserved through a 
line of successive teachers, by viva voce instructions ; 
and it is not impossible that the disciples may have 
had portions of their great- master’s lectures written 
down ; yet the details of the system were evidently 
entrusted to the tablets of memory'. At Rome, the 
productions of the Stagirite made few converts at 
first; and even in Cicero's time, their perusal was 
confined to a few of the learned. This sect, there- 
fore, in the Augustan age, made no considerable ap- 
pearance in that capital ; and, with the exception of 
Lucretius, we scarcely find among the Roman poets 
* By this calculation, the whole of Aristotle’s works 
must have contained a quantity of prose equal to sixteen 
times 28,08)1 verses — a tact the more extraordinary, since 
the greater part of his writings are merely outlines or text- 
books, giving the heads of his lectures, or the chief topics 
of discussion in the different branches of science. 
