Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/103

 Ancient and Modern Eloquence and Poesie; yet in Things of this Nature, where the Mediums of Judging are quite different, and where Geometrical Rules of Proportion, which in their own Nature are unalterable, go very far to determine the Question, his Judgment seemed to be of great weight. I shall therefore chuse rather to give a short View of what he says upon these Subjects, than to pass any Censure upon them of my own.

Of Architecture he says, "That though the Moderns have received the Knowledge * of the Five Orders from the Ancients, yet if they employ it to better Purposes, if their Buildings be more useful, and more beautiful, then they must be allowed to be the better Architects: For it is in Architecture, as it is in Oratory; as he that lays down Rules, when and how to use Metaphors, Hyperbole's, Prosopopoeia's, or any other Figures of Rhetorick, may very often not be so good an Orator as he that uses them judiciously in his Discourses: So he that teaches what a Pillar, an Architrave or a Cornice is, and that instructs another in the Rules of Proportion, so as to adjust all the Parts of each of the several Orders aright, may not be so good an Architect as he that