Mile
| [No. 166] | Monday, September 10, 1711 | Addison |
... Quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignis,
Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas.
Ovid.
Aristotle tells us that the World is a Copy or Transcript of those Ideas which are in the Mind of the first Being, and that those Ideas, which are in the Mind of Man, are a Transcript of the World: To this we may add, that Words are the Transcript of those Ideas which are in the Mind of Man, and that Writing or Printing are the Transcript of words. As the Supreme Being has expressed, and as it were printed his Ideas in the Creation, Men express their Ideas in Books, which by this great Invention of these latter Ages may last as long as the Sun and Moon, and perish only in the general Wreck of Nature. Thus
Cowley
in his Poem on the Resurrection, mentioning the Destruction of the Universe, has those admirable Lines.
Now all the wide extended Sky,
And all th' harmonious Worlds on high,
And Virgil's sacred Work shall die.