DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53553#0185
161
new back proceeds, the work is gently and progressively
wound up by turning the pegs., until one entire page is thus
unfolded, which is forthwith separated from the roll and
spread on a flat board or frame. A draftsman, unacquainted
with the language of the manuscript, makes a faithful fac-
simile of it, with all its chasms, blemishes, or irregularities.
The taking of this copy is no less a work of extreme patience
and nicety, as it is only by a particular reflection of light, that
the characters, whose black colour differs very little from that
of the carbonized papyrus, can be distinguished. The fac-
simile is next handed to an antiquarian, who separates the
words and sentences, supplies any hiatus, and otherwise en-
deavours to restore the sense of the original. By a like pro-
cess the succeeding pages are unrolled and decyphered, if I
may be allowed to use the expression, until the work is com-
pleted. The whole is afterwards published, both in letter-
press and correct engravings of each page, at the expence
of the government.
In this tedious and costly manner, one work (a treatise of
Philodemus on the power of music) has been recovered and
published. Unfortunately, it was both the first and last with
which the lovers of ancient literature have been gratified; and
the contents of even this were far from compensating for ei-
ther the trouble or expence bestowed upon it. Great ex-
pectations, however, may reasonably be formed from the
uninterrupted labours of the present establishment, since its
reorganization by Mr. Hayter.—That gentleman’s superin-
tendance is of too recent a date to have furnished any thing
but hopes ; but these hopes you will allow to be well found-
ed, when I inform you that among the manuscripts now un-
rolling, there is a work by Epicurus himself, entitled hepi ^yseos
(of nature), and a Latin poem by an author as yet unascer-
tained*. Here
* A circumstantial account of this Latin poem, together with a fac-simile of
Y
new back proceeds, the work is gently and progressively
wound up by turning the pegs., until one entire page is thus
unfolded, which is forthwith separated from the roll and
spread on a flat board or frame. A draftsman, unacquainted
with the language of the manuscript, makes a faithful fac-
simile of it, with all its chasms, blemishes, or irregularities.
The taking of this copy is no less a work of extreme patience
and nicety, as it is only by a particular reflection of light, that
the characters, whose black colour differs very little from that
of the carbonized papyrus, can be distinguished. The fac-
simile is next handed to an antiquarian, who separates the
words and sentences, supplies any hiatus, and otherwise en-
deavours to restore the sense of the original. By a like pro-
cess the succeeding pages are unrolled and decyphered, if I
may be allowed to use the expression, until the work is com-
pleted. The whole is afterwards published, both in letter-
press and correct engravings of each page, at the expence
of the government.
In this tedious and costly manner, one work (a treatise of
Philodemus on the power of music) has been recovered and
published. Unfortunately, it was both the first and last with
which the lovers of ancient literature have been gratified; and
the contents of even this were far from compensating for ei-
ther the trouble or expence bestowed upon it. Great ex-
pectations, however, may reasonably be formed from the
uninterrupted labours of the present establishment, since its
reorganization by Mr. Hayter.—That gentleman’s superin-
tendance is of too recent a date to have furnished any thing
but hopes ; but these hopes you will allow to be well found-
ed, when I inform you that among the manuscripts now un-
rolling, there is a work by Epicurus himself, entitled hepi ^yseos
(of nature), and a Latin poem by an author as yet unascer-
tained*. Here
* A circumstantial account of this Latin poem, together with a fac-simile of
Y