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that elapsed from the first opening of the ruins, and the discovery there of a large library of manuscripts, before it was found possible to decypher and transcribe the latter:-the little intrinsic value of the few specimens, that have been transcribed and published, and the tediousness of the process by which this was effected, which seemed to forbid the expectation of any thing much more important being done for the future. These circumstances combined have damped the hopes hitherto entertained of great light being thrown upon ancient literature, and large additions made to our treasure of Greek and Roman authors, by this discovery. Yet there remains the certain fact, that more than a thousand MSS are in existence from an age far older than the oldest, which have otherwise come down to us, and which, however difficult to decypher, are still proved by experience to be legible. Who does not feel a secret hope, that some happy chance may yet show, that it has not been to no purpose, that they were preserved beneath the burning streams of a volcano, and have been recovered from the earth, after having been buried there seventeen centuries? Since the first attempts, which in fact are the only very successful ones, and with which many of our readers doubtless are acquainted, several new efforts have been made to improve the process of unrolling and decyphering these manuscripts. Of these we propose to offer our readers some account; and for the sake of rendering it more intelligible, and more interesting, to such of them as may not happen to be informed of the details of the discovery of the ruins of Herculaneum, we have ventured to take up the subject from the beginning.

Herculaneum was a city on the Italian coast in Campania, between Pompeii and Naples, and is often mentioned in the classical writers. The name is written sometimes Herculanum, by which it is now commonly known on the European continent, and sometimes Herculaneum, as it is called in England and America. It suffered considerably by an earthquake, under the reign of the Emperor Nero; and under the reign of the Emperor Titus, and in the time of Pliny the elder, was buried beneath the streams of lava from mount Vesuvius. The celebrated writer just mentioned lost his life in his unguarded attempt to gratify his curiosity upon this great phenoNew Series. No. 10.

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menon of nature. The city of Pompeii and some smaller places were buried at the same time. Herculaneum was not, as Winckelman says, covered in the first instance by the lava, but by showers of glowing cinders and hot ashes, cemented, shortly after they had fallen, by torrents of rain. Upon this first covering, the burning streams of lava poured and filled the city with a mass, which as it cooled passed into stone. That the inhabitants had time to save themselves, and their most valuable possessions, appears from the circumstance that few skeletons, jewels, or precious articles of any kind, have been found. At Stabiæ, three female figures were discovered, of which one was apparently a servant, and was carrying a wooden casket: the two other figures had golden bracelets and earrings, which are now preserved in the museum at Naples; and at Pompeii, according to Eustace, sixty skeletons have been found. That attempts had, at some former period, been made to explore these ruins is rendered probable, by the subterraneous passages into them, evidently the work of much labor, which were discovered at the commencement of the modern excavations. An inscription also was found, which is supposed to allude to the same attempt. The modern discovery was made by occasion of the digging of a well on the spot, in the grounds of the prince of Elbeuf, near his residence. This was a house built upon the sea-shore, on rocks of Lava, near a Franciscan cloister. In sinking the well, the laborers struck against a flight of stone stairs, but, piercing through them, continued their work till they came to a firm soil, consisting of the ashes of Vesuvius. Three female statues were here found, which of all the discoveries of Herculaneum are, as yet, the most celebrated, perhaps the most valuable, and which are in the gallery of antiques at Dresden, under the name of the Vestals.

After the discovery of the figures, the prince of Elbeuf was forbidden to continue the excavations. Nothing more was done for thirty years, when the estate was purchased by the prince-royal, afterwards king of Spain, and chosen as the place

Pliny the younger, however, in his admirable account of the eruption, of Vesuvius, and death of his uncle, Epist VI. 16. ascribes the final determination of the latter to sail toward the foot of the mountain to a more noble motive, than the gratification of curiosity:- Vertit ille consilium, et quod studioso animo inchoaverat, obit maximo. Deducit quadriremes, adscendit ipse non Retinæ modo sed multis (erat enim frequens amenitas oræ) laturus

auxilium.

of his summer residence. The well, which was still open, was further excavated, and farther traces of a building, which proved afterwards to be a theatre, were found. An inscription containing the name of the city was also discovered, and this gave animation to the further steps taken, in investigating the famous ruins. Till this time it does not appear to have been known that the ruins belonged to Herculaneum.

The superintendence of the work was intrusted to a Spanish surveyor, of the name of Alcubiere, through whose ignorance much damage was done to the relics of antiquity. Among others quoted, is the following instance.-An inscription in large brass letters, which were two palms high, was discovered, and without being copied, was torn down, bent up, and brought in a basket to the king, reduced to a literal resemblance to those useful kitchen utensils with which bad writing is often compared, to the great embarrassment of the antiquaries, who have attempted to explain it. But as this first overseer was advanced in rank, the care of the excavations fortunately fell to a Swiss officer, Major Charles Weber, to whom, says Winckelman, we are indebted for all the proper measures that have been taken. Our limits oblige us to omit, from this sketch, the account of the statues, pictures, and other works of art, the inscriptions, articles of furniture and luxury, which were found, and of which the description occupies near a hundred pages, in the last edition of Winckelman's works. Such of our readers, as have not access to the original, can consult the French or the Italian translation, the latter of which is enriched by the valuable commentary of the Abbé Fea, of Rome.

It was the discovery of a library of MSS among other relics of antiquity found in these ruins, which was heard with most interest by the literary world. They were found in a chamber so small, that two men, with outstretched arms, could reach across it, in a villa that had been partly excavated.— Around the sides of the room were cases, such as those usually placed in public offices, and in the middle a case, with shelves on each side, admitting a passage all round,—all being about six feet high. The wood, of which these cases were made, was in a state of coal, and dropped to pieces when it was touched. The cases were filled with black rolls, which at first were thought to be bits of wood, of no value, and many of them were thrown away or trodden under foot, as such. The regu

larity, however, of their position awakened the suspicion of what they were, and they were carefully collected to the number of near two thousand, and deposited in the museum at Portici. These rolls thus saved from ruin, in the moment of discovery were found to be manuscripts written on papyrus, or the Egyptian reed, of which specimens exist in the greenhouses in our vicinity, and from which the word paper, in the modern languages, is derived. They were mostly of uniform dimensions, viz. a span long, and three or four fingers thick ;some were but half a span long. The most are shrivelled and contracted, by the heat of the lava, under which the house. was buried, and all are reduced to coal. So thin was the paper originally, and so frail has it been made by the operation of heat and time, that a breath affects it. The rolls were, in the first instance, composed of strips of paper, about four inches wide, lapped a finger's breadth over each other, and thus glued together. This work of gluing the strips of papyrus together was among the ancients the business of the glutinatores; and that their art ought not to be reckoned among the quite inferior mechanical arts, may be inferred from the fact, that the Athenians, who thought nothing contemptible which promoted letters, erected a statue to Philatius, for his improvements in it. The strips thus pasted together, and afterwards written upon transversely, were sometimes simply rolled up, but more commonly attached to a roller of wood. This was called umbilicus, from the appearance of the end of it, after the MS. was rolled up; and hence the expressions ad umbilicum ducere, and ad umbilicum pervenire. Several of these rolls, after the discovery, were divided longitudinally, to show the internal construction, and to be exhibited to strangers. In some of these, says Winckelman with horror, the character was as large and fair, as that of the great Oxford Pindar! The blacker these rolls are, and the more perfectly they are charred, the more easy are they to be unrolled and decyphered; for in this case, the moisture was more thoroughly and uniformly expelled, by the heat, and they were thus reduced to a state, in which they would be less affected by the lapse of time. Those, on the contrary, which by their position were less uniformly charred, have mouldered more, and afford less hope of being made legible. What these manuscripts contained was for a long time a question. Signior Martorelli, an Italian scholar, who wrote a thick and learned volume upon an inkstand found in the

ruins, maintained that they were documents of various sorts, soldiers' furloughs, reports, and official instruments, and that in the building where they were found, were the municipal archives of the city of Herculaneum. Winckelman refutes the opinion at considerable length; and his own, that it was a collection of the Greek writings of the single and hitherto unknown author Philodemus, which he formed from the circumstance, that the four first unrolled were works of this writer, has been proved, by farther examination, also incorrect. Besides the treatise of Philodemus on music, which has been published, with engraved fac similes of the columns of the original, and a learned commentary, (of which edition a copy is in the Athenæum library and the college library at Cambridge,) and several other unpublished writings of the same author, there have been discovered, in Greek, some books of Epicurus, and a commentary of Colotus, an unknown author, on Plato, and a short Latin poem. These are in addition to the discoveries made by Dr Hayter, a person sent from England by the Prince Regent, of which we shall presently speak. These manuscripts are written in columns, about four fingers broad, and forty, or in some cases, forty-four lines long, of which the most distinct idea will be formed, by examining a copy of the edition of Philodemus.* This work has forty such columns, and is a metaphysical treatise on music, of almost no intrinsic value. The second work of Philodemus, which has never been published, contains seventy such columns, and is the second book of a treatise on rhetoric. The third MS. unrolled contained the first book of the same treatise; and the fourth is a work on virtues and vices, by the same author.

Various attempts were made, with little or no success, to unrol these manuscripts, in the trial of which several of them were destroyed, before the method afterwards used was invented. It was the invention of a Roman monk, Antonio Piaggi, who, having made public his proposal, and received the approbation of the competent judges, was sent for to Naples to apply it. It has been often described, among others by Kotzebue, in his Travels in Italy, and is in substance as follows. The MS. is suspended by steel arms, which arise perpendicularly from a convenient frame, and attach themselves to the above-mentioned roll of wood, in the middle of the manuscript. Goldbeaters' skin is glued to a portion of the latter, about a half finger wide, and, by * This description applies only to the MS. of Philodemus.

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