Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/127

 truth and nature, it will be worth enquiring what guides have been used, and what labours employed, by the one and the other, in these noble travels and pursuits.

The modern scholars have their usual recourse to the universities of their countries; some few it may be to those of their neighbours; and this in quest of books, rather than men, for their guides, though these are living, and those, in comparison, but dead instructors; which like a hand with an inscription, can point out the straight way upon the road but can neither tell you the next turnings, resolve your doubts, or answer your questions, like a guide that has traced it over, and perhaps knows it as well as his chamber. And who are these dead guides we seek in our journey? They are at best but some few authors that remain among us, of a great many that wrote in Greek or Latin, from the age of Hippocrates to that of Marcus Antoninus, which reaches not much above six hundred years. Before that time I know none, besides some poets, some fables, and some few epistles; and since that time, I know very few that can pretend to be authors rather