Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/124

 he that raises a Library, takes in Books of all Values; since bad Books have their Uses to Learned Men, as well as good ones. So that, for any Thing we know to the contrary, there might have been in this Alexandrian Library a great Number of (n) Scribblers, that, like Mushrooms or Flies, are born and die in small Circles of Time. (3.) The World can make a better Judgment of the Value of what is lost, at least, as it relates to the present Enquiry, than one at first View might perhaps imagine. The lost Books of the Antiquity of several Nations, of their Civil History, of the Limits of their several Empires and Commonwealths, of their Laws and Manners, or of any Thing immediately relating to any of these, are not here to be considered, because it cannot be pretended that the Moderns could know any of these Things, but as they were taught. So neither is what may have related to Ethicks, Politicks, Poesie and Oratory here to be urged, since in those Matters, the Worth of Ancient Knowledge has already been asserted. So that one is only to enquire what and how great the Loss is of all those Books upon Natural or Mathematical Arguments, which were preserved in the Alexandrian, Asiatick and Roman Libraries,