ABSTRACT
There are no human Productions to which Time seems so bitter and malicious an Enemy, as to the Works of the learned: for though all the Pride and Boast of Art must sooner, or later, yield to this great Destroyer; though all the Labours of the Architect, the Statuary, and the Painter, must share the same Mortality with their Authors; yet, with these, Time acts in a gentler and milder Manner, allows them generally a reasonable Period of Existence, and brings them to an End by a gradual and imperceptible Decay: so that they may seem rather cut off by the fatal Laws of Necessity, than to be destroyed by any such Act of Violence, as this cruel Tyrant daily executes on us Writers.
