Page:A Treatise upon the Small-Pox.pdf/20

xvi ''then in its Infancy, as other liberal and mechanical Arts have once been, required like them, Time, Observation and Experience to bring it to Maturity. And the more abstruse and difficult any Art is, the longer will it be before it arrives at a State of Perfection. It was therefore the Fault of the Times, and not of the Persons, that they were not wiser and more able Physicians. It is to their great Honour that they were the first Inventers of the healing Art, or at least the first that made any considerable Improvement in it, and in this they deserved well of Mankind and excelled their Predecessors, as much as they fall short of those, who succeeded them. It was owing to their own good Sense and Diligence, that they knew so much, and to the Age they lived in, that they knew no more; and therefore I may justly make the same Apology for them, which the eminent Poet, Mr. Dryden in one of his Prologues makes for the old English Writers for the Stage:''

I