ON THE LIBRARIES OF GREECE. 
It may be reasonably supposed, that many 
Manuscripts in Greece have experienced the 
treatment which works of the same sort have 
met with in other countries. Poggius, we are 
told, found, while he was at the Council of 
Constance, a Manuscript of Quintilian on the 
table of a pickling-shop. Masson met with one 
of dgobardus in the hands of a bookbinder, who 
was about to use it for the back of a book ' : and 
one of Asconius was about to be employed for 
the same purpose. Musculus found 2 , in the roof 
of a Benedictine monastery, some of the works 
of Cicero, and the whole of Ovid. Numbers of 
Manuscripts in Greece are irrecoverably lost to 
us, either by design or accident; and of those, 
which we may hereafter meet with, we cannot 
suppose all will prove to be of equal value ': 
TOI votQqxoooi tfav>o< tit r& S 
(1) Naude, 121. 
(2) " Arci'lit, ut aliquando sub ipso aediuin tecto confusam dissolu- 
taruin membranarum congeriem Musculus offenderit," &c. M. Adamus 
in Vitd Musculi. 
(3) Those which have an appearance of antiquity in the writing, 
are not always the most antient. The Monks employed persons wbo 
were copyists hy profession ; men who not only repaired the titles of 
Manuscripts, but were dexterous enough to copy the antient charac- 
ters. " The Manuscripts written in Lombard letters," says Simon, 
"are not always from a hand as antient as the time of Lombard 
vritinj. The same may be said of other works." 
