ience, the volumes
of paper or parchment were distributed to the four thousand baths of the
city; and such was their incredible multitude, that six months were
barely sufficient for the consumption of this precious fuel. Since the
Dynasties of Abulpharagius have been given to the world in a Latin
version, the tale has been repeatedly transcribed; and every scholar,
with pious indignation, has deplored the irreparable shipwreck of the
learning, the arts, and the genius, of antiquity. For my own part, I am
strongly tempted to deny both the fact and the consequences. The fact is
indeed marvelous. "Read and wonder!" says the historian himself; and the
solitary report of a stranger who wrote at the end of six hundred years
on the confines of Media is overbalanced by the silence of two annalists
of a more early date, both Christians, both natives of Egypt, and the
most ancient of whom, the patriarch Eutychius, has amply described the
conquest of Alexandria. The rigid sentence of Omar is repugnant to the
sound and orthodox precept of the Mahometan casuists: they expressly
declare that the religious books of the Jews and Christians which are
acquired by the right of war should never be committed to the flames;
and that the works of profane science, historians or poets, physicians
or philosophers, may be lawfully applied to the use of the faithful. A
more destructive zeal may perhaps be attributed to the first successors
of Mahomet; yet in this instance, the conflagration would have speedily
expired in the deficiency of materials. I shall not recapitulate the
disasters of the Alexandrian library, the involuntary flame that was
kindled by Caesar in his own defense, or the mischievous bigotry of the
Christians, who studied to destroy the monuments of idolatry. But if we
gradually descend from the age of the Antonines to that of Theodosius,
we shall learn from a chain of contemporary witnesses that the royal
palace and the temple of Serapis no longer contained the four, or the
seven, hundred thousand volumes which had been assembled by the
curiosity and magnificence of the Ptolemies. Perhaps the church and seat
of the patriarchs might be enriched with a repository of books; but if
the ponderous mass of Arian and Monophysite controversy were indeed
consumed in the public baths, a philosopher may allow, with a smile,
that it was ultimately devoted to the benefit of mankind. I sincerely
regret the more valuable libraries which have been