have given to men of letters. It is an indisputable truth, that learning will always flourish most where the amplest rewards are proposed to the industry of the learned; and that the most shining periods in the annals of literature are the reigns of wise and liberal princes, who know that fine writers are the oracles of the world, from whose testimony every king, statesman, and hero, must expect the censure or approbation of posterity. In the old states of Greece the highest honours were given to poets, philosophers and orators; and a single city (as an eminent writer[1] observes) in the memory of one man, produced more numerous and splendid monuments of human genius than most other nations have afforded in a course of ages.
The liberality of the Ptolemies in Egypt drew a number of learned men and poets to their court, whose works remain to the present age the models of taste and elegance; and the writers, whom Augustus protected, brought their compositions to a degree of perfection, which the language of mortals cannot surpass. Whilst all the nations of Europe were covered with the deepest shade of ignorance, the Califs in Asia encouraged the Mahomedans to improve their talents, and cultivate the fine arts; and even the Turkish Sultan, who drove the Greeks from Constantinople, was a patron of literary merit, and was himself an elegant poet. The illustrious family of Medici invited to Florence the learned men whom the Turks had driven from their country; and a general light succeeded to the gloom which ignorance and superstition had spread through the western world. But that light has not continued to shine with equal splendour; and though some slight efforts have been made to restore it,
- ↑ Ascham.
