Poole, Reginald S.: The cities of Egypt (London, 1882)

192

CITIES OF EGYPT.

cost the life's labour of generations of scholars, striving
day and night to work back corrupt texts into the purity
in which the Alexandrian Library possessed them, or
hopelessly studying a broken fragment of a book which
was there complete.

There was a time of repose before the vast material
of the Library was brought to bear on speculative
thought. The limits of teaching at the Museum, and
the predominance of the practical side of knowledge,
made the Alexandrian learning at first sceptical and
critical. As sceptical it did not attach itself to any one
of the great schools of thought. As critical it devoted
itself to the heavy work of examining, comparing, and
revising the vast body of Greek literature now for the
first time brought together. The poets especially were
eagerly studied, and we owe our text of Homer to the
careful labour of the learned men of Alexandria. Thus
the earliest school of Alexandria was eminently prac-
tical. In the sphere of imagination it produced nothing.
The Alexandrian poetry is sometimes exotic, like the
Idylls of Theocritus, but is generally a copy more or
less tasteful of old masters. Original art was of neces-
sity absent. There is no style of Alexandria at the