Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/80

 Rhetorical Ornaments should, for that sole Reason, be more perfect anciently than now; especially if these be only Secondary Beauties, without which, that Discourse wherein they are found may be justly valuable, and that in a very high Degree. So that, though, for the purpose, one should allow the Ancient Historians to be better Orators than the Modern, yet these last may, for all that, be much better, at least, equally good Historians; those among them especially, who have taken fitting Care to please the Ears, as well as instruct the Understandings of their Readers. Of all the Ancient Historians before Polybius, none seems to have had a right Notion of writing History, except Thucydides: And therefore Polybius, whose first Aim was, to instruct his Reader by leading him into every Place, whither the Thread of his Narrative carried him, makes frequent Excuses for those Digressions, which were but just necessary to beget a thorough Understanding of the Matter of Fact of which he was then giving an Account. These Excuses show that he took a new Method; and they answer an Objection, which might otherwise have been raised from the small Numbers of extant Histories that were written before his