From: Peter Graham, Rutgers University Libraries
The following seems apposite at this point--a not uncommon view, expressed by
a character in Tom Stoppard's play of a view years ago, *Arcadia*:
***********************************************************************
Thomasina: [The great library of Alexandria was burned....] All the lost
plays of the Athenians....How can we sleep for grief?
Septimus [hodge]: By counting our stock. Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven
from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripides, my lady! You should no more grieve
for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson
book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like
travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will
be picked up by those behind. ... The missing plays of Sophocles will turn
up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures
for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries
glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my
lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of
Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?
***********************************************************************
--pg
NEW ZIP: Peter Graham Rutgers University Libraries
169 College Ave., New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1163
<URL:http://aultnis.rutgers.edu/pghome.html>