Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/26

 xviii a book in which he compared the achievements of the ancients and moderns in Moral and Political Knowledge, in Eloquence and Poetry, in Grammar, in Architecture, Statuary, and Painting, in Logic and Metaphysics, in Geometry and Arithmetic, in Chemistry, in Anatomy, in Natural History, in Astronomy and Optics, in Music, in Physic, in Philology, and in Theology; and he wrote besides chapters on the learning of Pythagoras and the most ancient philosophers of Greece, on the History, Geometry, Natural Philosophy, Medicine, and Alchemy of the Ancient Egyptians, and on the learning of the Ancient Chaldæans and Arabians.

The book appeared in 1694, when Wotton was twenty-eight years old, and was called Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning. Although its style was not exhilarating, the book was quite readable, and it disposed decisively of the claims of the ancients in learning, though not of course in literature and the fine arts. Wotton's tone in speaking of Sir William Temple is extremely civil, though one detects here and there a suspicion of contempt, but he destroyed utterly the fabric of his vision. Temple had not thought that any