vol.. XVIII.] l-HILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 67Q 



which have been borrowed from the ancients; especially since he pretends to 

 prove that in some things either of them have so far out-done the other, that 

 it cannot be a matter of dispute among able judges, to which side one ought 

 to give the preference. Hereupon, in order to make out this proposition, he 

 divides his discourse into three general parts. 1 . He inquires what sciences the 

 ancients may have been supposed to bring to perfection, chiefly because they 

 got the start by being born first. 2. Wherein the ancients have excelled the 

 moderns, and why they may have been supposed to have done so. 3. Wherein 

 the moderns have out-done the ancients. Under the first head he reckons 

 ethics and politics; under the second oratory and poetry ; all the other parts of 

 learning have either been improved by the moderns, or the question cannot 

 well be decided. (Chap. 1 .) 



He begins with ethics and politics. Here he supposes that the ancients 

 might have been as well skilled as the moderns, since nothing but experience 

 is requisite to understand those things, which the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, 

 and Romans could not miss of, who lived in formed societies for so many 

 ages ; accordingly he instances Aristotle's Ethics to Nicomachus, Xenophon's 

 Cyrus, Theophrastus's Characters, Tully's Offices, and several other ancient 

 books, as master-pieces in their respective kinds, of moral and political know- 

 ledge. Yet all this, according to our author, requires no particular strength 

 of genius to complete it, since the Chinese and Peruvians seem to have done 

 as great things towards the raising of wise and lasting governments, which 

 must be the effects of extraordinary skill in this part of knowledge, as any of 

 those nations which are so much commended for civil prudence. (Chap. 2.) 



Next he goes to oratory and -poetry. He supposes that Virgil, Homer, 

 H )race, and Terence may have been better poets than any of the moderns 

 in their several ways; and that Demosthenes and Cicero have not been equalled 

 by modern orators. He thinks that the excellency of the Greek poetry might 

 at first proceed from the manageableness of the Greek language, and afterwards 

 from the great veneration which was paid to their poets, which made very many 

 put in for the prize, of whom some few, one or two at least of a sort, arrived 

 to so great an excellency, that others have despaired to equal them, since imi- 

 tation in those things, not only nauseates but clogs men's parts. The consti- 

 tution of their goverments, which were chiefly republican, obliged them like- 

 wise to study oratory, as a likely way to rise in their several states, for which 

 reason, as among many rivals, some grew very excellent ; so when their liberty 

 was taken away by the Macedonians, their eloquence decayed along with it. 

 The same reasons may in his opinion be assigned for the rise and decay of the 

 Roman eloquence and poetry. Though in some sort of compositions, histories 



