CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 229 



Mr. RAY to Dr. ROBINSON. 



SIR, The Essay you propound concerning the ancient 

 and modern learning were not difficult to make ; but I 

 think you are better qualified for such an undertaking 

 than I, and therefore shall refer it to you. In summe the 

 ancients excel the moderns in nothing but acuteness of 

 wit and elegancy of language in all their writings, in 

 their poetry and oratory. As for painting and sculpture, 

 and music and architecture, some of the moderns I think 

 do equaj^, if not excel, the best of them, not in the theory 

 only, but also in the practice of those arts ; neither do 

 we give place to them in politics or morality; but in 

 natural history and experimental philosophy we far tran- 

 scend them. In the purely mathematical sciences ab- 

 stracted from matter, as geometry and arithmetic, we 

 may vie with them; as also in history; but in astronomy, 

 geography, and chronology, we excel them much. No 

 wonder they should outstrip us in those arts which are 

 conversant in polishing and adorning their language, 

 because they bestowed all their time and pains in culti- 

 vating of them, and had but one, and that their native 

 tongue to mind. But those arts are by wise men cen- 

 sured as far inferior to the study of things, words being 

 but the pictures of things ; and to be wholly occupied 

 about them, is to fall in love with the picture and neglect 

 the life ; and oratory, which is the best of these arts, is 

 but a kind of voluptuary one, like cookery, which sophis- 

 ticates meats and cheats the palate, spoiling wholesome 

 viands, and helping unwholesome. 

 Black Notley, Dec. 15, 90. 



