Without usurping an office so
invidious, the Emperor might safely commit to ignorance and time the
accomplishment of this destructive wish. Before the invention of
printing and paper, the labor and the materials of writing could be
purchased only by the rich; and it may reasonably be computed that the
price of books was a hundredfold their present value. Copies were slowly
multiplied and cautiously renewed: the hopes of profit tempted the
sacrilegious scribes to erase the characters of antiquity,[26] and
Sophocles or Tacitus were obliged to resign the parchment to missals,
homilies, and the _Golden Legend_. If such was the fate of the most
beautiful compositions of genius, what stability could be expected for
the dull and barren works of an obsolete science? The books of
jurisprudence were interesting to few and entertaining to none: their
value was connected with present use, and they sunk forever as soon as
that use was superseded by the innovations of fashion, superior merit,
or public authority. In the age of peace and learning, between Cicero
and the last of the Antonines, many losses had been already sustained,
and some luminaries of the school or Forum were known only to the
curious by tradition and report.
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