Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/158

106 made, of art or nature, have all been produced by the transcending genius of the present age. Which clearly shows, how little merit those ancients can justly pretend to; and takes off that blind admiration paid them by men in a corner, who have the unhappiness of conversing too little with present things. Reflecting maturely upon all this, and taking in the whole compass of human nature, I easily concluded, that these ancients, highly sensible of their many imperfections, must needs have endeavoured, from some passages in their works, to obviate, soften, or divert the censorious reader, by satire, or panegyrick upon the criticks, in imitation of their masters, the moderns. Now, in the common-places of both these, I was plentifully instructed, by along course of useful study in prefaces and prologues; and therefore immediately resolved to try what I could discover of either, by a diligent perusal of the most ancient writers, and especially those who treated of the earliest times. Here, I found, to my great surprize, that although they all entered, upon occasion, into particular descriptions of the true critick, according as they were governed by their fears or their hopes; yet whatever they touched of that kind, was with abundance of caution, adventuring no farther than mythology and hieroglyplick. This, I suppose, gave ground to superficial readers for urging the silence of authors against the antiquity of the true critick, though the types are so apposite, and the applications so necessary and natural, that it is not easy to conceive, how any reader, of a modern eye and taste, could overlook them. I shall venture