The modern scholars have their usual recourse to the Universities of
their countries; some few, it may be, to those of their neighbours; and
this in quest of books rather than men for their guides, though these
are living and those in comparison but dead instructors, which, like a
hand with an inscription, can point out the straight way upon the road,
but can neither tell you the next turnings, resolve your doubts, or
answer your questions, like a guide that has traced it over, and perhaps
knows it as well as his chamber. And who are these dead guides we seek
in our journey? They are at best but some few authors that remain among
us of a great many that wrote in Greek and Latin from the age of
Hippocrates to that of Marcus Antoninus, which reaches not much above
six hundred years.--SIR W. TEMPLE. _Ancient and Modern Learning._