23 JUNE 1888, Page 16

[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR, — May I be permitted

to answer Canon MacColl's letter, as I believe myself free from any prepossession on this sub.- ject, and have no desire to impute motives to the Canon as he does to Gibbon and others ? It is hardly fair to say that later writers only follow Gibbon. The best work on the subject is Matter's " Histoire de l'Ecole d'Alexandrie," from which we- learn that the library was destroyed in the time of Julius CEesar. Another library then existing was enlarged, and woul4 probably have existed for some years, as the early Roman Emperors encouraged the Alexandiian School. This policy was, however, altered by the later Emperors, and according to- Ammianus Marcellinus, the Museum and Serapeum were abandoned A.D. 257. The fact that books were brought to Constantinople from Egypt is mentioned, and it is generally acknowledged that any books left will have been destroyed with the Temple of Serapis by order of Theodosius. Canon MacColl accuses Gibbon of garbling the authority of Orosius, but I fail to see the difference made by the few words omitted. He says that "there is no reasonable doubt that the library existed when Alexandria was taken ;" but this is the very point, for there are grave doubts. Amru's letter to Omar exists, in which he describes the taking of the city, and though he men- tions the gardens, the palaces, the baths, the theatres, he says- nothing of the library. Canon MacColl speaks lightly of the fact that the burning is neither mentioned by Eutychius nor by Al Makin; but it is important, as the former was Patriarch of Alexandria, and, as Dr. Krehl says, "a scholar for whom the loss of the library, if it did really exist at the time, would have been a sad and pitiable event," and the latter " reports fully on the taking of the town, down to the smallest detail,"• and yet not one word of the library. The authorities quoted by the Canon are of little value. Abul-al-Lateef was no historian, but a writer of travels, who speaks of Aristotle teaching there, and of Alexander founding the library, neither of which are facts. The passage quoted from Abul-Farag does not exist in his original Syriac Chronicle, but only in the Arabic abridgment ;- and the statement that baths were heated for six months. by rolls of parchment or papyrus should make us pause ; besides, one can hardly place much reliance on the unauthenti- cated quotation of an eye-witness six hundred years after the event. The writers mentioned as believing in the myth are all

the pre-critical era, and can be matched by as many, or more, who do not believe. The passage of Ibn Khaldoun shows that Omar was capable of such an action, but that is, not the same as saying that he did it.—I am, Sir, &c., A TRUTH-SEEKER.