were grown obscure. About the interpreting, explaining, supplying, commenting on these, almost all the first Wits were employed. A Work of great Use, and for which we ought to esteem our selves much beholden to them. For indeed, if they had not compleated that Business, to our Hands, we of this Age, had not been so much at Leisure, as now I hope we are, to prosecute new Inventions. If they had not done it, we should; of which we ought not to doubt, seeing we behold, that even now, when the Soil of Criticism is almost quite barren, and hardly another Crop will come, yet many learned Men cannot forbear spending their whole Labour in toyling about it; what then should we have done, if all those Books had come down untouch'd to our Hands?
We cannot then, with any Sobriety, detract from the Criticks, and Philologists, whose Labours we enjoy. But we ought rather to give them this Testimony, that they were Men of admirable Diligence: and that the Collections, which they have made, out of the Monuments of the Antients, will be wonderfully advantageous to us, if the right Use be made of them; if they be not set before us, only that we may spend our whole Lives in their Consideration, and to make the Course of Learning more difficult: But if they be imploy'd, to direct us in the Ways that we ought to proceed in Knowledge for the future; if by shewing us what has been already finish'd, they point out to us, the most probable Means, to accomplish what is behind. For methinks, that Wisdom, which they fetch'd from the Ashes of the Dead, is something of the same Nature with Ashes themselves; which, if they are kept up in Heaps together,
