Indeed we need not be solicitous to trace the history of these literary relics a step further than fairly into the midst of the dark ages. For even if all external and correlative evidence were wanting, and if nothing were known concerning the classic authors except this--that, such as they now are, they were extant in the tenth century, more than enough would be known to make it abundantly certain that these works were the product of a very different, and of a distant age. The men of those times might indeed have been the transcribers and conservators, and perhaps even the admirers, of Thucydides, of Xenophon, of Aristophanes, of Plato, of Virgil, of Cicero, of Horace, and of Tacitus; but assuredly they were not the _authors_ of books, such as those which bear these names. The living pictures of energy, and of wisdom, and of liberty, which these monuments of taste and genius contain, could never have been imagined in the cells of a monastery, nor composed in an age when little was to be seen abroad but ignorance, violence, and slavery; and little found within but a dreaming philosophy, and a degrading superstition. It is not the prerogative of the human mind, however great may be its native powers, to trespass far beyond the bounds of the scene by which it is immediately surrounded, or to frame images of things which, in their elements, as well as in their adjuncts, belong to a system and an economy altogether unknown to the men of that time. To the genius of man it is given to imitate, to select, to refine, and to exalt; but not to create. * * * * * The general import of the facts that have thus been briefly stated, is this, namely, that the books now extant, and which are usually attributed to the Greek and Roman writers, have, such as we find them, descended from a very remote age. But this general affirmation must always be understood to include an exception of those smaller omissions, additions, and alterations in the text, which have taken place, either by design, or inadvertency, in the course of often repeated transcriptions. The actual amount and the importance of these corruptions of the text of ancient authors is likely to be overrated by general readers, who seeing that the subject is continually alluded to in critical works, and knowing that criticisms upon “various readings” often occupy a space five times exceeding that which is filled by the text, and that not seldom they become the subject of voluminous and angry controversies, are led to suppose that questions upon which the learned are so long and so seriously employed, cannot be otherwise than weighty and substantial. With a view of correcting this impression, so far as it may be erroneous, we shall now briefly explain the general nature, the causes, and the extent of these variations and corruptions.