Referring the reader to the Encyclopaedia for some account of the discovery and antiquities of this city, we propose in the present article to direct his attention to the attempts which have been made to recover the literary treasures, long retained in a state intermediate between existence and annihilation among its ruins. The few successful results of the investigation, which have hitherto been laid before the public, are, indeed, of such a nature as not to have rewarded, by their importance, the great labour which has been bestowed on them. But the zeal of the lovers and patrons of literature has not allowed their ardour to be subdued by the difficulties of the task. His present Majesty, George the Fourth, is well known to have distinguished himself, in the early part of his life, by the munificence which he displayed in sending over a native of this country to superintend and remunerate the operations which were slowly and patiently conducted upon the manuscripts at Naples; and, in the course of the last few months, one of the most illustrious ornaments of British science, supported by a similar liberality on the part of our government, has been engaged in far more rapidly bursting the fetters of the imprisoned authors, by the masterly touch of his magic wand.

The progress of the discovery and examination of these singular remains of antiquity has been described, from time to time, in the Philosophical Transactions, and in many other publications. It was in October 1752 that the first of the carbonised rolls of papyrus were found: and Paderni's account of them is accompanied by an interesting specimen, which exhibits the genuine form of the characters used by the Romans in their manuscripts.

N·ALTERI·VS·DYL·C·DEM·CVRIS·CRVDE

The precise spot where the discovery was made was the Bosco di Sant' Agostino, a shrubbery belonging to the church of St Austin, close to Portici, towards Torre del Greco: it was covered with ashes, and a hard tufa or lava, to the depth of about 120 English feet. In the course of a year or two about 250 rolls had been found, some Greek and some Latin. The library appeared to be an apartment belonging to a considerable palace, which had not been further examined. The floor was of an elegant mosaic work: the books were in presses, inlaid with different sorts of wood, disposed in rows, and ornamented with cornices. In 1754, Paderni spent twelve days in this room, and found in it 337 volumes, all apparently made brittle by the fire, and all in Greek; besides, eighteen rolls of a larger size, lying in a separate bundle, which were in Latin, and were more injured than the Greek. The former 250 seem to have been in a separate room, belonging to the same building. Some few of the rolls had an umbilicus or roller of wood in the centre. The canon Mazzocchi began his labours about this time, and found that the subject of one of the manuscripts was Music, and that of another the Epicurean philosophy: a small bust of Epicurus having also been found in the same room.

In 1755, a further account of these operations was communicated to the Royal Society by Mr Locke. "Within two years last past," says his correspondent, "in a chamber of a house, or, more properly speaking, of an ancient villa, for by many marks it is certainly known, that the place, where they are now digging, was never covered with buildings, but was in the middle of a garden; there has been found a large quantity of rolls, about half a palm long, and round, which appeared like roots of wood, all black, and seemed to be only of one piece. One of them falling on the ground it broke in the middle, and many letters were observed, by which it was first known that the rolls were of papyrus. The number of these rolls, as I am told, were about 150, of different sizes. They were in wooden cases, which are so much burnt, as are all the things made of wood, that they cannot be recovered. The rolls, however, are hard, though each appears like one piece. Our king has caused infinite pains to be taken to unroll them and read them; but all attempts were in vain; only by slitting some of them some words were observed. At length Signor Assemani, being come a second time to Naples, proposed to the king to send for one Father Antonio [Piaggi], a writer at the Vatican, as the only man in the world who could undertake this difficult affair. It is incredible to imagine what this man contrived and executed. He made a machine with which, by the means of certain threads, which, being gummed, stick to the back part of the papyrus, where there was no writing, he begins by degrees to pull, while, with a sort of engraver's instrument, he loosens one leaf from the other, which is the most difficult part of all; and then makes a sort of lining to the back of the papyrus, with exceeding thin leaves of onion [goldbeaters' skin] if I mistake not; and with some spirituous liquor, with which he wets the papyrus, by little and little he unfolds it. All this labour cannot be well comprehended without seeing. With patience superior to what man can imagine, this good father has unrolled a pretty large piece of papyrus, the worst preserved, by way of trial. It is found to be the work of a Greek writer, and is a small philosophic tract, in Plutarch's manner, on Music; blaming it as pernicious to society, and productive of softness and effeminacy. It does not discourse of the art of music. The beginning is wanting. The papyrus is written "across," in so many columns, every one of about twenty lines, and every line is about four inches long. Between column and column is a void space of "more than" an inch. The letters are distinguishable enough. Father Antonio, after he has loosened a piece, takes it off where there are no letters and places it between two [pieces of glass] for the better observation; and then, having an admirable talent in imitating characters, he copies it with all the lacunae, which are very numerous in the scorched papyri, and gives this copy to the Canon Mazzocchi, who tries to supply the loss and explain it. The letters are capital ones, and almost without any abbreviation. The worst is, the work takes up so much time, that a small quantity of writing requires five or six days to unroll, so that a whole year is already consumed about half this roll. The lacunae, for the most part, are of one or two words, that may be supplied by the context. As soon as this roll is finished, they will begin a Latin one. There are some so voluminous, and the papyrus so fine, that unrolled they would take up 100 palms space [or almost 100 feet]. The curiosity of these papyri is, that there is no little shaft of wood on which they were rolled."

It may here be remarked, that the practice of rolling books on an umbilicus of wood was by no means universal where papyrus was employed. The Egyptian manuscripts, for instance, so frequently found in the catacombs, are without any umbilicus, the end of the sheet being left blank, for the purpose of being doubled up into a sort of core, which remained unopened, and served instead of a roller. A wooden pen, without a slit, was found in some of the subsequent excavations, together with other materials for writing. In 1755 the name of Philodemus had been discovered at the end of the first manuscript, and another work of the same author, on Rhetoric, had been unrolled. Mazzocchi was translating these, and two persons were constantly employed upon other volumes.

Some interesting particulars respecting the history of these operations are also found in Barthelemy's Voyage en Italie, published at Paris in 1801. "It was a long time," says the author, "before any mode could be devised of unrolling them, and in this dilemma some of them were cut with a knife longitudinally, as we divide a cylinder in the direction of its axis. This mode of proceeding disclosed the writing to view, but completely destroyed the work. The different strata of the paper adhered so closely together, that in attempting to separate them they were reduced to 'ashes' [or rather dust]; and all that could be obtained was a single column or page, of a manuscript, that consisted perhaps of a hundred."

"Under these circumstances, a patient and persevering monk suggested a mode of completely unrolling the paper. He made some attempts, which occupied a considerable portion of time, but in which by degrees he was successful. He goes on with his tedious labour, and in the same manner gradually and slowly succeeds. His plan is this. Having found the beginning of the manuscript, he fastens to the exterior edge some threads of silk, which he winds round so many pegs, inserted in a small frame. These pegs he turns with the utmost precaution, and the manuscript is imperceptibly unrolled. Lit- tle is to be expected from the first few layers of the paper, which in general are either torn or decayed. Before any pages of a work can be obtained, the manuscript must be unrolled to a certain depth, that is, till the part appears which had suffered no other injury than that of being calcined. When a few columns have been thus unrolled, they are cut off, and pasted on linen. For unfolding one of these manuscripts, several months are requisite, and hitherto nothing has been obtained but the last 38 columns of a Greek work against music. Two other columns or pages are also shown, of two Greek manuscripts, that were cut to pieces before the method of unrolling them was discovered. Each appears to have been part of a philosophical dissertation."

In some letters from the Secretary of the French Embassy at Naples, subjoined by M. de St Croix, and dated 1785, 1786, and 1787, it is asserted that of about 1500 or 1800 manuscripts that had been discovered, 200 or more had been destroyed by a charlatan who undertook to restore them with the assistance of some chemical application: it is also stated as highly probable that many thousands of similar manuscripts may still exist in different parts of the ruins; a conjecture so much the more interesting, as the greater number of the rolls hitherto found "have been so crushed that it will never be possible to open them, and several have been injured by the barbarous attempt to separate the leaves with a knife."

The work of Philodemus was published in 1793, as the first volume of the Herculaneum Voluminum quae supersunt. f. Naples. The manuscript is faithfully delineated in copperplates, and the restored readings and translation are printed on the opposite page, followed by an elaborate commentary: the Academicians of Portici are the professed editors. The title at the end stands thus, the work being the fourth book only of the essay.

φιλο ΔΗΜΟΥ ΓΓΕΡΙΜΟΥΣΙΚΗ

Δ

A passage in the last column will serve as another specimen.

ΜΑΙΝΟΝ ΤΑC ΤΟCΑΤΑΤΟΙ ΝΥΝ ΕΙΡΗΚΩ C ΓΡΙΟΚΑΤΙΝ ΓΡΚΕΧΕΙΡΙΚΑ Α ΓΙΑΙΑΤΕΙΝΑΙ ΜΗΝΑΝΑΕΟΝΤΩCΟ ΧΑΡΙΝ ΜΕΝΙΓΙΑΝΟΤ ΤΟCΑΤΩΝ

The subsequent volumes of the series are little known in this country. But a part of another manuscript was inserted in the Herculanea of Sir W. Drummond and Mr R. Walpole (4to, Lond. 1810); together with a very favourable report of the progress of the operations, which had been continued under the patronage of his present Majesty, and at the expence of the British Government.

"Many obstacles," say the authors in their dedication to the Prince of Wales, "opposed themselves to the accomplishment of this noble design, which address and perseverance could alone remove. The difficulty of opening the rolls of papyrus, which had been reduced to a perfect carbo, can scarcely be conceived by those who have not witnessed the process. Much time and many hands were required in carrying it on; and the expence incurred was proportionate to the labour. When the manuscripts were unrolled, it was necessary that persons competent to the task should decipher and transcribe them; distribute the (capital) letters into the words to which they belonged; and supply those deficiencies in the text which but too frequently occurred. At the head of the directors of this difficult undertaking were Rosini, the editor of Philodemus; an English gentleman [the late Mr Hayter] sent out for the purpose by your Royal Highness; and, we believe, a Neapolitan priest, supposed to be deeply versant in ancient literature. It was not until large sums had been expended by your Royal Highness, and the success of the execution had justified the boldness of the plan, that pecuniary assistance was requested and obtained from Parliament. Attentive as the people of this country are, and ought to be, to the expenditure of the public money, they must glory in having contributed, with the heir-apparent to the British throne, in forwarding a work which does honour to the English name."

Again, in the preface, "The first papyrus which was opened contained a treatise upon Music, by Philodemus the Epicurean. It was in vain that Mazzocchi and Rosini wrote their learned comments on this dull performance: the sedative was too strong; and the curiosity, which had been so hastily awakened, was as quickly lulled to repose. A few men of letters, indeed, lamented that no further search was made for some happier subject on which learned industry might be employed; but the time, the difficulty, and the expence, which such an enterprise required, and the uncertainty of producing any thing valuable, had apparently discouraged and disgusted the academicians of Portici.

"Things were in this state, when his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales proposed to the Neapolitan government to defray the expences of unrolling, deciphering, and publishing the manuscripts. This offer was accepted by the court of Naples; and it was consequently judged necessary by his Royal Highness to select a proper person to superintend the undertaking. The reputation of Mr Hayter, as a classical scholar, justified his appointment to the place, which the munificence of the Prince, and his taste for literature, had created. This gentleman arrived at Naples in the beginning of the year 1802, and was nominated one of the directors for the development of the manuscripts.

"During a period of several years, the workmen continued to open a great number of the papyri. Many, indeed, of these frail substances were destroyed, and had crumbled into dust, under the slightest touch of the operator.

"When the French invaded the kingdom of Naples, in the year 1806, Mr Hayter was compelled to retire to Sicily. It is certainly to be deeply regretted, that all the papyri were left behind. The wri- ter of this preface only knows, with certainty, that when he arrived at Palermo in 1806, on his second mission to his Sicilian Majesty, he found that all the papyri had been left at Naples, and that the copies of those which had been unrolled were in the possession of the Sicilian government. How this happened, it would be now fruitless to inquire. The English minister made several applications to the court of Palermo to have the copies restored, but without success, until the month of August 1807. It was pretended, that, according to the original agreement, the manuscripts should be published in the place where his Sicilian Majesty resided; that several Neapolitans had assisted in correcting, supplying, and translating them; that his Sicilian Majesty had never resigned his right to the possession, either of the originals, or of the copies; and that, as a proof of this right being fully recognised, the copies had been deposited by Mr Hayter himself in the Royal Museum at Palermo. It was, however, finally agreed, that the manuscripts should be given up, pro tempore, to Mr Drummond, who immediately replaced them in the hands of Mr Hayter. In the space of about a year, during which period they remained in the possession of the latter, a fac simile of part of one of the copies was engraved, and some different forms of Greek characters, as found in these fragments, were printed under his direction.

"From some circumstances, which took place in the summer of 1808, and to which we have no pleasure in alluding, a new arrangement became indispensable. Mr Drummond proposed to the Sicilian government, that the copies should be sent to London, where they might be published with advantages which could not be obtained at Palermo. His proposal was acceded to, and they have been accordingly transmitted to England. The manner in which their publication will be conducted will, of course, depend upon the determination of his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, in whose hands they have been deposited; but it may be presumed, that the Republic of Letters will not have to lament, that these interesting fragments are to be brought to light under the auspices of a Prince, who has always shown himself to be the protector of learning and the arts. We venture not to assert, but we believe, that the manuscripts will be submitted to the inspection of a select number of learned men, and will be edited under their care, and with their annotations and translations."

Mr Walpole informs us in a subsequent article, dated at Palermo, 1807, that the whole of the manuscripts that were then in Sir W. Drummond's house, amounting to more than eighty, were Greek, with the exception of one fragment of a Latin poem, which is said to have been a description of the Battle of Actium and its consequences, and which has been conjectured by some critics to be the work of the Varus, well known by name as the friend of Horace. One of the eighty has appeared in the Herculaneum-sia; but where are the seventy-nine? The whole of the manuscripts was reported to have been presented to the university of Oxford: has a new volcano, throwing out darkness and ashes, overwhelmed them on the banks of the Isis? Or were they, notwithstanding all the labour and expence of obtaining them, found too imperfect to deserve publication? It seems, indeed, not improbable, that the persons employed to unroll them in the first instance, who were paid in proportion to the number of pages they obtained, were too strongly tempted to sacrifice such parts of the manuscript as would have required the most labour, for the more profitable object of proceeding with a portion which would allow them to earn the most pay with the least loss of time, and that some irreparable injuries have been done to the manuscripts from these interested motives. Some pages, however, of the copies were certainly very little impaired, and these must at least deserve to be preserved from further accidents, by printing and publishing them in the simplest possible form.

It is well known, that at the time of the first arrangement between the two courts, respecting these operations, the King of Naples sent six of the rolls unopened, as a present to the Prince of Wales; nor were the antiquaries and philosophers of Great Britain inattentive to this latent treasure. Several experiments were made at Carlton House, in imitation of the processes which were said to have been successful in Italy; and at last, two of the manuscripts were entrusted to the care of an individual, who is supposed to have given an account of his own further attempts, in the fifth number of the Quarterly Review.

"At first," he informs us, "as it often happens in such cases, he appeared to be very confident of ultimate success; but difficulties afterwards occurred, and he did not continue his experiments long enough to overcome them, or even very materially to lessen them; his professional engagements interfered, much of his time had already been sacrificed, and the intelligence, that Sir W. Drummond had succeeded in obtaining possession of the whole collection of the works which had been unrolled, made his own attempts appear comparatively too insignificant to deserve immediate prosecution."

"One mode of treating the papyri occurred, however, to this gentleman, which appeared to him to promise a decided advantage to such as might hereafter proceed in the operation. This was the employment of the anatomical blowpipe, an instrument which he had many years before been in the habit of using for delicate purposes, in the place of a dissecting knife. The blowpipe served him ... for a knife and a forceps; for the gum, the goldbeater's skin, and the threads of the Italians. No instrument can be so soft in its pressure as the air, for holding a thin fragment by suction, without danger of injuring it; no edge nor point can be so sharp as to be capable of insinuating itself into all the crevices which the air freely enters. But the humidity of the breath he found to add much to the utility of the instrument. The slight degree of moisture, communicated to the under or inner surface of a fold, made it curl up and separate from the parts beneath, where the adhesion was not too strong; while dry air from a bladder was perfectly incapable of detaching it. But the process of separating every leaf in this manner was always tedious and laborious, where there was much adhesion, and sometimes altogether impracticable. Chemical agents of all kinds he tried without the least advantage; and even maceration, for six months, in water, was unable to weaken the adhesion. It is remarkable that the characters were not effaced by this operation; so that the gum, which had fixed them on the paper, must have wholly lost its solubility, and the rest of its original properties.

"It has indeed been supposed by some travellers, that the manuscripts were, in reality, never charred, the ashes, thrown out by the volcano, having been probably incapable of communicating to them a sufficient degree of heat for producing this effect. In fact it is said that some of the spices, found in an embalmed body, retained a considerable portion of their aromatic smell. But there is no doubt whatever that the papyri are now complete charcoal, such as is formed by heat only. A small fragment of their substance burns readily, like common charcoal, with a creeping combustion, without flame, and with a slight vegetable smell; fresh papyrus burns with a bright flame; and almost all mineral coal, which may possibly have been formed from vegetable substances, without the operation of heat, flames abundantly. Bovey coal, for example, which retains much of the appearance of wood, exhibits a considerable flame. It is highly probable that many of the adhesions have been formed by the oily and smoky vapours distilled off from the hottest parts, and irregularly condensed in the colder; and, so far as this conjecture may be true, it would perhaps be advisable to try the effects of a longer maceration in alcohol and in ether, than has hitherto been employed. The "spear of Achilles" might also be applied with very reasonable hopes of success. A repetition of the exposure to heat, kept up more equably and more powerfully, might very probably expel the adhesive substances, without injuring the texture of the charcoal; proper care being taken to preclude completely the access both of air and of water, which might be done first by means of the air pump, and then by the insertion of a little potassium, together with the roll, in a vessel hermetically sealed. But the adhesions appear sometimes to be of a mere mechanical nature, being derived from the irregular folds, into which the manuscripts have been pressed, or from some roughness of the contiguous surfaces." P. 18. 20.

Mr Hayter thought it necessary to reply to some of the criticisms contained in this article, and published a pamphlet entitled Observations upon a Review of the Herculanea (4to, London, 1810); strenuously maintaining that the quotation from the comedy of Timocles, already extant in Athenaeus, ought to be a hexameter, and not an iambic; and seeming almost to believe that Pluto, and not Plato, is the author of the fanciful etymology of the name of Juno, though the passage quoted happens to be found in Plato's Cratylus. It is difficult to understand by what test the merits of such a scholar were appreciated, when he was appointed to superintend the operations at Portici.

The next era of our national exertions exhibits, however, a still more striking example of good nature and facility. Dr Sickler, of Hildburghausen, who had been in Italy as a private tutor, succeeded in convincing a Committee of the Royal Society of Gottingen, that he had unrolled a fragment of papyrus, of which he exhibited a specimen. There was no evidence that the particular manuscript, on which the experiment was said to have been performed, had presented any considerable difficulty; and it was well known that some of the pages had been read before with comparative ease. It happened, however, that the page in question bore the intrinsic marks of a gross fraud. At first sight, it read like perfectly good Greek, and it had all the genuine rust of antiquity about it; but, upon examination, it was found to contain a blunder which no Greek writer, nor any Greek librarian, could ever have committed; for the name of a serpent is made feminine, while in all ancient authors it is uniformly masculine; and the general air of authenticity was easily understood, when it was found that it was copied, with little variation, from detached passages of Diodorus Siculus, and principally from the fabulous account of the voyage of Jambulus to Ceylon and beyond it. In the meantime, a negotiation with Dr Sickler had been commenced; an account of it was published, with the specimen in question, under the title of Herculaneum Rolls. Correspondence relative to a Proposition made by Dr Sickler, 4to, London, 1817; the parties thought themselves too far engaged to retract; nor had they the patience to wait for the result of a preliminary experiment upon a portion of a roll, which had been weighed in London, and sent, carefully packed, to Hildburghausen, in order that the surface developed might be accurately compared with the weight: and Dr Sickler was brought to London, with his family, for the more effectual prosecution of his operations, which were so successful in a few months, as to ruin twelve chosen specimens, which had been sent over as a second present to the Prince of Wales; with the exception, however, of a few fragments, which were left sufficiently entire to be made the subject of some subsequent experiments of a chemical nature.

This mischievous farce was at last terminated by a Report of the Committee appointed to superintend the Experiments of Dr Sickler, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, in March 1818; the Committee stating, in conclusion, that Dr Sickler had totally failed in his endeavours to satisfy them that his method was practicable; and annexing an account of the expenditure, of something more than L1100, in the purchase of this total failure.

But one advantage, and that not an unimportant one, was derived from this investigation. Sir Humphry Davy had been appointed one of the superintending committee; and his studies having recently been directed to the different states of carbonic substances, in the course of his patriotic and benevolent researches into the means of preventing explosions in coal mines, he was the more naturally led to consider by what agents these apparently carbonised substances might be capable of modification. The whole detail of the process which he invented has never been made public, in order that it might not be abused by any unprincipled projector: but there is reason to think that it bears considerable analogy to the maceration in ether, which had been tried unsuccessfully, but still recommended as deserving further examination, by a less fortunate operator. A very interesting report of Sir H. Davy on the state of the manuscripts was published in the Journal of the Royal Institution for April 1819.

"My experiments soon convinced me," says Sir Humphry, "that the nature of these manuscripts had been generally misunderstood; that they had not, as is usually supposed, been carbonized by the operation of fire, and that they were in a state analogous to peat or Bovey coal, the leaves being generally cemented into one mass by a peculiar substance, which had formed during the fermentation and chemical change of the vegetable matter comprising them, in a long course of ages. The nature of this substance being known, the destruction of it became a subject of obvious chemical investigation; and I was fortunate enough to find means of accomplishing this without injuring the characters, or destroying the texture of the manuscripts.

"After the chemical operation, the leaves of most of the fragments perfectly separated from each other, and the Greek characters were in a high degree distinct; but two fragments were found in peculiar states; the leaves of one easily separated, but the characters were found wholly defaced on the exterior folds, and partially defaced on the interior. In the other, the characters were legible on such leaves as separated, but an earthy matter, or a species of tufa, prevented the separation in some of the parts; and both these circumstances were clearly the results of agencies to which the manuscripts had been exposed, during or after the volcanic eruption by which they had been covered.

"It appeared probable from these facts, that different manuscripts might be in other states, and that one process might not apply to all of them; but even a partial success was a step gained; and my results made me anxious to examine in detail the numerous specimens preserved in the museum at Naples. Having had the honour of showing some of my results to the Prince Regent, his Royal Highness was graciously pleased to express his desire that I should proceed in my undertaking; and I found, on my arrival at Naples, that a letter from his Royal Highness to the King, and a communication made from the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to the Neapolitan Government, had prepared the way for my inquiries, and procured for me the necessary result of such patronage, every possible facility in the pursuit of my objects.

"An examination of the excavations that still remain open at Herculaneum immediately confirmed the opinion which I entertained, that the manuscripts had not been acted on by fire. These excavations are in a loose tufa, composed of volcanic ashes, sand, and fragments of lava, imperfectly cemented by ferruginous and calcareous matter. The theatre, and the buildings in the neighbourhood, are encased in this tufa, and, from the manner in which it is deposited in the galleries of the houses, there can be little doubt that it was the result of torrents laden with sand and volcanic matter, and descending at the same time with showers of ashes and stones, still more copious than those that covered Pompeii. The excavation in the house, in which the manuscripts were found, as I was informed by Monsign. Rosini, has been filled up; but a building, which is said by the guides to be this house, and which, as is evident from the engraved plan, must have been close to it, and part of the same chain of buildings, offered me the most decided proofs that the parts nearest the surface, and a fortiori, those more remote, had never been exposed to any considerable degree of heat. I found a small fragment of the ceiling of one of the rooms, containing lines of gold leaf and vermilion in an unaltered state; which could not have happened, if they had been acted upon by any temperature sufficient to convert vegetable matter into charcoal.

"The state of the manuscripts exactly coincides with this view; they were probably on shelves of wood, which were broken down when the roofs of the houses yielded to the weight of the superincumbent mass; hence many of them were crushed and folded in a moist state, and the leaves of some pressed together in a perpendicular direction, and all of them mixed in two confused heaps; in these heaps the exterior manuscripts, and the exterior part of the manuscripts, must have been acted on by water; and as the ancient ink was composed of finely divided charcoal suspended in a solution of glue or gum, wherever the water percolated continuously, the characters were more or less erased.

"Moisture, by its action upon vegetable matter, produces decomposition, which may be seen in peat bogs in all its different stages; when air and water act conjunctly on leaves or small vegetable fibres, they soon become brown, then black, and by long continued operation of air, even at common temperatures, the charcoal itself is destroyed, and nothing remains but the earths which entered into the construction of the vegetable substance. When vegetable matter is not exposed to moisture or air, its decay is much slower; but in the course of ages, its elements gradually react on each other, the volatile principles separate, and the carbonaceous matter remains.

"Of the manuscripts, the greater number (those which probably were least exposed to moisture or air, for till the tufa consolidated, air must have penetrated through it) are brown, and still contain some of their volatile substance, or extractive matter, which occasions the coherence of the leaves; others are almost entirely converted into charcoal, and in these, when their form is adapted to the purpose, the layers may be readily separated from each other by mechanical means. Of a few, particularly the superficial parts, and which probably were most exposed to air and water, little remains except the earthy basis; the charcoal of the characters, and some of that of the vegetable matter being destroyed, and they are in a condition approaching to that of the manuscripts found at Pompeii, where the air, constantly penetrating through the loose ashes, there being no barrier against it as in the consolidated tufa of Herculaneum, has entirely destroyed all the carbonaceous parts of the papyrus, and left nothing but earthy matter. Four or five specimens that I examined were heavy and dense, like the fragment to which I referred in the introduction to this report, a considerable quantity of foreign earthy matter being found between the leaves, and amongst the pores of the carbonaceous substance of the manuscripts, evidently deposited during the operation of the cause which consolidated the tufa.

"The number of manuscripts, and of fragments originally brought to the museum, as I was informed by M. Ant. Scotti, amounted to 1696; of these, 88 have been unrolled, and found in a legible state; 319 more have been operated upon, and, more or less, unrolled, and found not to be legible; 24 have been presented to foreign potentates. Among the 1265 that remain, and which I have examined with attention, by far the greater number consists of small fragments, or of mutilated or crushed manuscripts, in which the folds are so irregular as to offer little hopes of separating them so as to form connected leaves; from 80 to 120 are in a state which presents a great probability of success, and of these the greater number are of the kind in which some volatile vegetable matter remains, and to which the chemical process, referred to in the beginning of this report, may be applied with the greatest hopes of useful results.

"The persons, charged with the business of unrolling the manuscripts in the museum, informed me, that many chemical experiments had been performed upon the manuscripts at different times, which assisted the separation of the leaves, but always destroyed the characters. To prove that this was not the case with my method, I made two experiments before them; one on a brown fragment of a Greek manuscript, and the other on a similar fragment of a Latin manuscript, in which the leaves were closely adherent; in both instances the separation of the layers was complete, and the characters appeared to the persons who examined them more perfect than before.

"It cannot be doubted, that the 407 papyri, which have been more or less unrolled, were selected as the best fitted for attempts, and were, probably, the most perfect; so that, amongst the 100 or 120, which remain in a fit state for trials, even allowing a superiority of method, it is not reasonable to expect that a much larger proportion will be legible. Of the 88 manuscripts containing characters, with the exception of a few fragments, in which some lines of Latin poetry have been found, the great body consists of works of Greek Philosophers or Sophists; nine are of Epicurus; thirty-two bear the name of Philodemus; three of Demetrius, and one of each of these authors, Colotes, Polystratus, Carneades, and Chrysippus; and the subjects of these works, and the works of which the names of the authors are unknown, are either natural or moral philosophy, medicine, criticism, and general observations on the arts, life, and manners."

The opinion of Sir Humphry Davy, and that of the anonymous operator, with respect to the state of the manuscripts, are so inconsistent with each other, that the decision between them seems almost reduced to the comparison of the credibility of opposite testimonies. According to the article in the Quarterly Review, "there is no doubt whatever that the papyri are now complete charcoal, such as is formed by heat only: a small fragment of their substance burns readily, like common charcoal, with a creeping combustion, without flame, and with a slight vegetable smell; ... Bovey coal exhibits a considerable flame." On the other hand, Sir Humphry's experiments have "convinced" him, that the manuscripts are "in a state analogous to peat, or Bovey coal: and he infers, from his examination of the surrounding objects, that they could not have been acted upon "by any temperature sufficient to convert vegetable matter into charcoal." Now it seems natural to prefer, on such an occasion, the authority which stands the highest with respect to the department of science in question, especially when one of the parties is unknown; but, in the present instance, some additional evidence may not be thought superfluous: and, in fact, a portion of one of the rolls, which had been examined both by Sir Humphry and by the earlier experimenter, has been very lately submitted to a new analysis, by a chemist well known for the minute accuracy of his investigations, and the solidity of his conclusions. He has exposed the carbonaceous matter to the process of destructive distillation, and he could obtain nothing whatever from it like asphaltum or any other product of mineral coal. It had scarcely enough of volatile matter to give any perceptible tinge of brown to the humidity absorbed by the substance, but enough to afford an animal smell, extremely like that of burnt bone, which he could only attribute to the glue or size of the ink, not completely decomposed by the same heat which had expelled all the volatile parts of vegetable origin: and upon exposing some glue, spread on paper, to the heat of boiling quicksilver, he obtained a partial carbonisation, which he conceived to be perfectly analogous to that of the manuscripts; the substance thus formed affording, when exposed to a stronger heat, very copious vapours of an empyreumatic oil, though the products of the vegetable matter were probably expelled by the heat first applied: and, on the other hand, the heat of boiling quicksilver did not produce the animal smell from the papyrus. Hence, he judged, that the precise temperature of the overwhelming mass might be ascertained with tolerable accuracy; and he was persuaded that nothing but a heat approaching to 600° of Fahrenheit could have reduced the roll which he examined to the state in which he found it. At any rate, when we consider that a heat a little above 220° is capable of blackening, when applied for a long continuance, the wood that surrounds the boiler of a steam engine, it seems very difficult to agree with Sir Humphry Davy in thinking that the manuscript could not have been subjected to "any heat capable of converting vegetable matter into charcoal;" unless by charcoal he understands pure carbon; and in this sense his observation will readily be admitted by all parties. It seems, indeed, to have been precisely with this conception of the state of the manuscripts, that it was suggested by the Quarterly Reviewer that some benefit might be expected from submitting the rolls to a heat more intense than that which they appeared to have undergone. The experiment, however, has been subsequently performed with considerable care; but it failed completely of success. A fragment of a roll, consisting of several thicknesses, adhering together, was inclosed in a crucible, surrounded by charcoal powder, and kept for some time in a red heat: but no perceptible alteration took place in the state of the fragment, the adhesions were in no degree detached, nor was the legibility of the characters on the surface impaired.

After the failure of this experiment, in order to leave no mechanical means untried, a cutting machine was contrived, consisting of a very thin circular plate made into a fine saw, and put in rapid motion by wheel work; this apparatus was found perfectly capable of dividing the substance of the roll, without splintering it, as knives had been found to do; and it was hoped that, by cutting it across wherever there was a considerable fold, it would be possible to extricate many parts from each other, which were only retained in contact by this accidental complication of form; and that having the advantage of beginning from within, it would be easier to work down upon the successive surfaces bearing the letters, the writing being always found on the inside only; and no material difficulty was apprehended in reuniting the several parts, when they should once have been rendered legible. It was also recollected that the interior parts of the manuscript had in general been the least crushed and the least adherent; and it was hoped that a part at least of each manuscript might thus be rendered legible with ease, and at the same time without destroying the parts remaining unopened. But the interior parts of the roll, which had been thus divided, were found as adherent as the exterior, and the adhesions still remained every where invincible; so that all hopes of succeeding by mechanical means only were finally abandoned. The machine was afterwards sent to Naples, as it was thought likely to be of use in some of the operations that Sir Humphry Davy's process would require; but it is said not to have been found necessary for this purpose.

With regard to Sir Humphry's observation, that vegetable matter not exposed to moisture or air undergoes a much slower decay, but that in the course of ages "its elements gradually react on each other, the volatile principles separate, and the carbonaceous matter remains," it may be remarked, that the rolls of papyrus do not seem to undergo any change of this nature, in the course of twenty or thirty centuries; for the Egyptian volumes, which are often found inclosed within the bandages of mummies, are generally so free from decay, that the paper has retained its primitive whiteness, without much alteration, except sometimes a slight tinge of brown; and its texture is so little impaired, that it still bears ink well without running. When, however, a roll has been in any degree pervaded by moisture, the water is found to have dissolved the gum which unites the elementary leaves of the plant, and to have caused partial adhesions of the contiguous surfaces of the sheets to each other.

Whatever difference of opinion there may be respecting the reasoning on which Sir Humphry Davy appears to have grounded his processes, there can be little doubt that they have been actually employed with considerable advantage. Mr Burton was encouraged by the British government to undertake the manipulation of the chemical operations that were required; and Mr Elmsley was requested to prolong his stay in Italy, and to become the superintendent of the literary department. It is said, that, according to the latest accounts, Sir Humphry is well satisfied with his success, and that a great variety of manuscripts have been rendered more or less legible; but that their contents have proved of little more importance, than might have been expected from the nature of the specimens before examined.

There can be no doubt that if Mr Elmsley attempts the restoration of any of the mutilated manuscripts, his labours will be free from such errors as have disgraced some of the former restorers of the Greek text; for, in fact, even the work of Philodemus on Music, which is commonly supposed to have been so well edited, exhibits some singular instances of a want of familiarity with the idiom of the language, and of a critical knowledge of its rules. In the 38th and last column, which was cursorily examined, for the purpose of selecting a specimen of the characters only, a passage occurs which is thus read and translated by the "Academicians of Portici." Τοσαντα τοιων ειχαται, σεσος & τινες εγκεχειριδια, δια τ' εις μην αυτον δενους, ινι χαριν μεν πλεοντων αυτων ουδε παλαιστημιον αφιειν εκτενιν. Tot igitur tantaque disserui adversus ea quae aliqui tractarunt, propterea quia opportunum fortasse erat. Namque profecto propter ipsorum suadetam ne minima quidem parte debebam me extendere. It is scarcely necessary to point out to any Greek scholar, that the true reading must be δια τ' εις μην αυτον. "Having said thus much, I may probably have been sufficiently diffuse in replying to the arguments of some persons; but 'that,' in proportion to the plausibility of these arguments, I ought not to have extended my discussion beyond a very small part of its actual magnitude..."

Such mistakes, however, can do but little injury to the mutilated authors, provided that the original be preserved at the same time in its unaltered state. But that original, in its authentic though imperfect form, is the only object of comparative value; and to delay its publication, for the sake of restorations of any kind, seems to be but a refined species of selfishness. "When we reflect," says the Quarterly Reviewer, "on the shortness of human life, and on our own grey hairs, we tremble to think how little chance there is of our being benefited by any great proportion of the eighty manuscripts still unpublished." Ten years, alas, have now elapsed since these reflections were printed, and not a line of the manuscripts in question has yet made its way to that public, which had so equitable a claim to a full communication of their contents.

It must not, however, be denied, that to the great majority of readers it would be far more agreeable and convenient to have the works not only restored but translated, if it could be done with tolerable accuracy, and without any very great loss of time. And even where a probable restoration is beyond our reach, it might be of some advantage to substitute a possible one. Thus, the specimen which has been copied from the Philosophical Transactions for 1752, might suggest the three hexameters,

ALTER.I.N.ALTERIUS.DULCI.AMPLEXU.

MORITURUS.

NON.EQUIDEM.CURIS.CRUDELIA.FATA.MOVERI. POSSE.REOR.NEC.ME.VITAE.SPESES.VANA.FEFELLIT.

Lines which are not indeed very harmonious or poetical, but which might have stood in the same work with

CONSILIIS.NOX.APTA.DUCUM.LUX.APTIOR.ARMS, and with Cleopatra's

TRAHITURQUE.LIBIDINE.MORTIS,

which are almost the only specimens that we possess of the poem attributed to Varius. If several independent attempts of this kind were made by different critics, the presumption in favour of those restorations, which were found to be common to all, would be raised from a mere possibility to a strong probability; but whether the same expence of labour and talents, directed into some other channel, might not create original works of still greater value, is a question not easy to be decided.

It is, however, of the less consequence to decide it, as the British operations on the manuscripts have been somewhat abruptly terminated: and the whole of this article must be considered as historical only. The failure of the experiments is attributed to the mutilated state of the rolls which were subjected to them, the best having been already opened; so that little has been obtained from the attempt, except a knowledge of the subjects of some of the manuscripts examined, which were almost all in Greek, and all in prose. The whole investigation has been conducted with all possible caution and economy; and if nothing has been added to our literary treasures, at least nothing has been taken away from our scientific reputation.

( F. o.)