Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/19

 Rh wrote a number of poems, intended, by their pathos and sublimity, to demonstrate the truth of his theories; of the existence of which poems (to borrow Swift's phrase) the world has ever since been pleased to make a profound secret, so that their usefulness has been much circumscribed. After the death of Desmarets his ideas were taken up and elaborated by Charles Perrault.

On the 27th of January, 1687, at a meeting of the French Academy called to celebrate the recovery of Louis XIV from a serious illness, Perrault recited a poem, which he had written for the occasion, called Le Stiècle de Louis le Grand. He maintained in it that the works of the ancients were not perfect: that men had not degenerated: that in many ways the moderns were greater than the ancients, for whom nevertheless it was only fitting that they should feel the greatest reverence. The audience was divided. Some received the reading of the poem with applause: others, chief among them Boileau, regarded it as a disgrace to the