Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/86

 venture to assert it in Print. Whether this is to be attributed to their Judgment, or Modesty, or both, I will not determine; though I am apt to believe, to both, because in our Neighbour-Nation, which is remarkable for a good deal of what Sir William Temple calls Sufficiency, some have spoken much more openly.

For the Members of the Academy in France, who since the Cardinal de Richelieu's Time, have taken so much Pains to make their Language capable of all those Beauties which they find in Ancient Authors, will not allow me to go so far as I have done. Monsieur Perrault, their Advocate, in Oratory sets the Bishop of Meaux against Pericles, (or rather, Thucydides,) the Bishop of Nismes against Isocrates, F. Bourdaloüe against Lysias, Monsieur Voiture against Pliny, and Monsieur Balzac against Cicero. In Poetry likewise he sets Monsieur Boileau against Horace, Monsieur Corneille and Monsieur Moliere against the Ancient Dramatick Poets. In short, though he owns that some amongst the Ancients had very exalted Genius's, so that it may, perhaps, be very hard to find any Thing that comes near the Force of some of the Ancient Pieces, in either Kind, amongst our Modern Writers, yet he affirms, that Poetry and Ora-