137 



Tations.- To all this add the burning-glasses made 

 mention -of before, which were in reality magnifying 

 glasses : nor could this property of them remain un- 

 observed. 



13. It would be a needless task, to undertake to 

 shew, that the ancients have the pre-eminence over 

 the moderns in architecture, engraving, -sculpture, 

 medicine, poetry, eloquence, and history. The mo- 

 derns themselves will not contest (his with them : on 

 the contrary, the height of their ambition is, to imi- 

 tate them in those branches of science. And indeed 

 what poets have we to produce, tit to be compared 

 with Homer, Horace, and Virgil ; what orators equal 

 to Demosthenes and Cicero ; what historians to match 

 Thucidides, Xenophon, Tacitus, and Titus Livius ; 

 what physicians such as Hippocrates and Galen ; 

 what sculptors like Phidius, Polycletus, and Praxite- 

 les ; what architects to rear edifices similar to those, 

 whose very ruins are still the object of our admi- 

 ration ? Till we have those, whom we can place iu 

 competition with the ancients in these inspects, it 

 will become our modesty to yield to them the supe- 

 riority. 



14. 'Tis worth notice, that the merit of the ancients 

 Is generally most controverted by those, who are least 

 acquainted with them. There are very few of those, 

 who rail at antiquity, qualified to relish the original 

 beauties of the Iliad, /fcneid, and other immortal per- 

 formances of ihe authors just enumerated. There ar6 

 fewer still, who are capable at one view to take in all 

 that variety of science, which hath been laid before 

 the reader, and which comprehends in it almost the 

 whole circle of our knowledge. Of the remaining 

 admirable monuments, which shew to what perfection, 

 the ancients carried the arts of sculpture and design, 

 how few have taken any due notice ; and of those, 

 how very few have been able to judge of their 

 real value ? True it is, that time and the hands 



