NUMBER SIX
TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1752. Numb. 6.
Quam multi tineas pascunt, blattasque discrti! Et redimunt soli carmina docta coci! Nescio quid plus est quod donat secula chartis, Victurus genium debet habere liber. Mart. lib. 6.
How many fear the Moth's and Bookworm's Rage, And Pastry-Cooks, sole Buyers in this Age? What can these Murtherers of Wit controul? To be immortal, Books must have a soul.
THERE are no human Productions to which Time seems so bitter and malicious an Enemy, as to the Works of the learned: for though all the Pride and Boast of Art must sooner, or later, yield to this great Destroyer; though all the Labours of the Architect, the Statuary, and the Painter, must share the same Mortality with their Authors; yet, with these Time acts in a gentler and milder Manner, allows them generally a reasonable Period of Existence, and brings them to an End by a gradual and imperceptible Decay: so that they may seem rather cut off by the fatal Laws of Necessity, than to be destroyed by any such Act of Violence, as this cruel Tyrant daily executes on us Writers.
It is true, indeed, there are some Exceptions to this Rule; some few Works of Learning have not only equalled, but far exceeded, all other human Labours in their Duration; but alas! how very few are these, compared to that vast Number which have been swallowed up by this great Destroyer. Many of them cut off in their very Prime; others in their early Youth; and others, again, at their very Birth; so that they can scarce be said ever to have been.
And, as to the few that remain to us, is not their long Existence to be attributed to their own unconquerable Spirit, and rather to the Weakness, than to the Mercy of Time? Have not many of their Authors foreseen, and foretold, the Endeavours which would be exerted to destroy them, and have boldly asserted their just Claim to Immortality, in Defiance of all the Malice, all the Cunning, and all the Power of Time?
Indeed, when we consider the many various Engines which have been employed for this destructive Purpose, it will be Matter of Wonder, that any of the Writings of Antiquity have been able to make their Escape. This might almost lead us into a Belief, that the Writers were really possessed of that Divinity, to which some of them pretended, especially at those which seem to have had the best Pretensions to this Divinity, have been almost the only ones which have escaped into our Hands.
And here, not to mention those great Engines of Destruction which Ovid so boldly defies, such as Swords, and Fire, and the devouring Moths of Antiquity, how many cunning Methods hath the Malice of Time invented, of later Days, to extirpate the Works of the Learned, and to convert the Invention of Paper, and even of Printing, to the total Abolition of those very Works which they were so ingeniously calculated to perpetuate.
The first of these, Decency will permit me barely to hint to the Reader. It is the Application of it to a Use for which Parchment and Vellum, the antient Repositories of Learning, would have been utterly unfit. To this cunning Invention of Time, therefore, Printing and Paper have chiefly betrayed the Learned; nor can I see, without Indignation, the Booksellers, those great Enemies of Authors, endeavouring by all their sinister Arts to propagate so destructive a Method: for what is commoner than to see Books advertised to be printed on a superfine, delicate, soft Paper, and again, very proper to be had in all Families, a plain Insinuation to what Use they are adapted, according to these Lines.
Lintot's for gen'ral Use are fit, For some Folks read, but all Folks ----.
By this abominable Method, the whole Works of several modern Authors have been so obliterated, that the most curious Searcher into Antiquity, hereafter, will never be able to wipe off the Injuries of Time.
And, yet, so truly do the Booksellers verify that old Observation, dulcis odor lucri ex re qualibet, that they are daily publishing several Works, manifestly calculated for this Use only; nay, I am told, that one of them is, by Means of a proper Translator, preparing the whole Works of Plato for the B----.