Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/95

 he has certainly done; and he knew that more Persons could find fault with his Stile, if it had been faulty, than find out Mistakes in his Rendring of the Greek of Thucydides. Besides, the Beauty of the Author's Composition is, in all Translations, entirely lost, though the Ancients were superstitiously exact about it; and in their elegant Prose, as much almost as in their Verse. So that a Man can have but half an Idea of the ancient Eloquence, and that not always faithful, who judges of it without such a Skill in Greek and Latin as can enable him to read Histories, Orations and Poems in those Languages, with Ease and Pleasure. But it is time to return to my Subject.

Rammar is one of the Sciences which Sir William Temple says, that (g) no Man ever disputed with the Ancients.

As this Assertion is expressed, it is a little ambiguous: It may be understood of the Skill of the Moderns in the Gram-