umes of the ancients lay buried in dust,
without any one condescending to examine them, necessity inspired them
with an invention that might bring those works and themselves into
public notice, by the care they took of renovating them. This they
imagined to effect by forming abridgments of these ponderous tomes.

All these Abridgers, however, did not follow the same mode. Some
contented themselves with making a mere abridgment of their authors, by
employing their own expressions, or by inconsiderable alterations.
Others formed abridgments in drawing them from various authors, but from
whose works they only took what appeared to them most worthy of
observation, and embellished them in their own style. Others again,
having before them several authors who wrote on the same subject, took
passages from each, united them, and thus combined a new work; they
executed their design by digesting in commonplaces, and under various
titles, the most valuable parts they could collect, from the best
authors they read. To these last ingenious scholars we owe the rescue of
many valuable fragments of antiquity. They fortunately preserved the
best maxims, characters, descriptions, and curious matters which they
had found interesting in their studies.

Some learned men have censured these Abridgers as the cause of our
having lost so many excellent entire works of the ancients; for
posterity becoming less studious was satisfied with these extracts, and
neglected to preserve the originals, whose voluminous size was less
attractive. Others, on the contrary, say that these Abridgers have not
been so prejudicial to literature; and that had it not been for their
care, which snatched many a perishable fragment from that shipwreck of
letters which the barbarians occasioned, we should perhaps have had no
works of the ancients remaining. Many voluminous works have been greatly
improved by their Abridgers. The vast history of Trogus Pompeius was
soon forgotten and finally perished, after the excellent epitome of it
by Justin, who winnowed the abundant chaff from the grain.

Bayle gives very excellent advice to an Abridger, Xiphilin, in his
"Abridgment of Dion," takes no notice of a circumstance very material
for entering into the character of Domitian:--the recalling the empress
Domitia after having turned her away for her intrigues with a player. By
omitting this fact in the abridgment, and which is discovered through
Suetonius, Xiphilin has evince