Eustace, John Cretwode: A classical tour through Italy An. MDCCCII (Vol. 3): 3. ed., rev. and enl (London: J. Mawman, 1815)

Ch. II.

THROUGH ITALY.

37

Portici, and of the village of Resina would with-
out doubt be abundantly compensated by the re-
covery of the Decads of Titus Livius and of the
books wanting in Tacitus, or of the treatise of
Cicero De Gloria, or of his Dialogues De Repub-
lica, that grand repository of all the political wis-
dom of the ancients. The first manuscripts un-
folded were Greek, and as Herculaneum was
known to be a Greek city, it was presumed that
the whole collection miffht be in that language :
but several Latin works have been found since,
and there is every reason to believe that in a city
so rich, and inhabited by so many wealthy Ro-
mans, there must have been considerable libraries
both public and private, and of course, complete
collections of Roman authors,
The mode of unrolling these manuscripts was
invented by a priest of the congregation of the
Somaschi (a body of clergy who devote them-
selves to the education of youth) but as the go-
vernment of Naples, though it employed him and
an assistant whom he instructed in the process,
did not however give much encouragement to the
undertaking, the work languished, and the ma-
nuscripts long remained a neglected treasure.
At length, the Prince of Wales, with a munifi-
cence that does equal honor to his taste and his
public spirit, undertook to defray the expences,