not forfeit by their
ignorance, what they might claim by their sagacity?

To illustrate this remark, by the mention of obscure names, would not
much confirm it; and to vilify, for this purpose, the memory of men
truly great, would be to deny them the reverence which they may justly
claim from those whom their writings have instructed. May the shade, at
least, of one great English critick[2] rest without disturbance; and may
no man presume to insult his memory, who wants his learning, his reason,
or his wit.

From the vexatious disappointment of meeting reproach, where praise is
expected, every man will certainly desire to be secured; and, therefore,
that book will have some claim to his regard, from which he may receive
informations of the labours of his predecessors, such as a catalogue of
the Harleian library will copiously afford him.

Nor is the use of catalogues of less importance to those whom curiosity
has engaged in the study of literary history, and who think the
intellectual revolutions of the world more worthy of their attention,
than the ravages of tyrants, the desolation of kingdoms, the rout of
armies, and the fall of empires. Those who are pleased with observing
the first birth of new opinions, their struggles against opposition,
their silent progress under persecution, their general reception, and
their gradual decline, or sudden extinction; those that amuse themselves
with remarking the different periods of human knowledge, and observe how
darkness and light succeed each other; by what accident the most gloomy
nights of ignorance have given way to the dawn of science; and how
learning has languished and decayed, for want of patronage and regard,
or been overborne by the prevalence of fashionable ignorance, or lost
amidst the tumults of invasion, and the storms of violence. All those
who desire any knowledge of the literary transactions of past ages, may
find in catalogues, like this at least, such an account as is given by
annalists, and chronologers of civil history.

How the knowledge of the sacred writings has been diffused, will be
observed from the catalogue of the various editions of the Bible, from
the first impression by Fust, in 1462, to the present time; in which
will be contained the polyglot editions of Spain, France, and England,
those of the original Hebrew, the Greek Septuagint, and the Latin
Vulgate; with the versions which are now used in the remotest parts of
Europe, in the countr