Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/144

, or Wilkins, Archimedes? Are and  histories beyond those of Herodotus and Livy? Are commentaries beyond those of Cæsar? the flights of Boileau above those of Vergil? If all this must be allowed, I will then yield Gondibert to have excelled Homer, as is pretended, and the modern French poetry, all that of the ancients. And yet I think it may be as reasonably said that the plays in Moorfields are beyond the Olympic games; a Welsh or Irish harp excels those of Orpheus and Arion; the pyramid in London those of Memphis; and the French conquests in Flanders are greater than those of Alexander and Cæsar, as their operas and panegyrics would make us believe.

But the consideration of poetry ought to be a subject by itself. For the books we have in prose, do any of the modern we converse with, appear of such a spirit and force as if they would live longer than the ancient have done? If our wit and eloquence, our knowledge or inventions, would deserve it, yet our languages would not. There is no hope of their lasting long, nor of anything in them. They change every hundred years so as to be hardly known for the