Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/182

 several Ages, Learning was so much in Fashion amongst them, and they took such Care to bring it all into their own Language, that some of the learnedest Jews, Maimonides in particular, wrote in Arabick, as much as in their own Tongue. So that we might reasonably have expected to have found greater Treasures in the Writings of these learned Mahometans, than ever were discovered before: And yet those that have been conversant with their Books say, that there is little to be found amongst them, which any Body might not have understood as well as they, if he had carefully studied the Writings of their Grecian Masters. There have been so many Thousands of Arabick and Persick MSS. brought over into Europe, that our learned Men can make as good, nay, perhaps, a better Judgment of the Extent of their Learning, than can be made, at this distance, of the Greek. There are vast Quantities of their Astronomical Observations in the Bodleian Library, and yet Mr. Greaves and Dr. Edward Bernard, two very able Judges, have given the World no Account of any Thing out of them, which those Arabian Astronomers did not, or might not have learnt from Ptolemee's Almagest, if we set aside their Observations which their Gre-