and interesting facts are buried in oblivion: the three great
historians of Rome have been transmitted to our hands in a
mutilated state, and we are deprived of many pleasing
compositions of the lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry of the
Greeks. Yet we should gratefully remember that the
mischances of time and accident have spared the classic
works to which the suffrage of antiquity had adjudged the
first place of genius and glory; the teachers of ancient
knowledge, who are still extant, had perused and compared
the writings of their predecessors; nor can it fairly be
presumed that any important truth, any useful discovery in
art or nature, has been snatched away from the curiosity of
modern ages.

I certainly do not ask you to subscribe to all that. In fact when
Gibbon asks us to remember gratefully 'that the mischances of
time and accident have spared the classic works to which the
suffrage of antiquity had adjudged the first place of genius and
glory,' I submit with all respect that he talks nonsense. Like
the stranger in the temple of the sea-god, invited to admire the
many votive garments of those preserved out of shipwreck, I ask
'at ubi sunt vestimenta eorum qui post vota nuncupata perierunt?'--
or in other words 'Where are the trousers of the drowned?' 'What
about the "Sthenoboea" of Euripides, the "Revellers" of Ameipsias--
to which, as a matter of simple fact, what you call the suffrage of
antiquity did adjudge the first prize, above Aristophanes' best?'

But of course he is equally right to this extent, that the fire
consumed a vast deal of rubbish: solid tons more than any man
could swallow,--let be, digest--'read, mark, learn and inwardly