oderns, a faction for Boileau and the
ancients." In the discussions on this subject a remarkable Frenchman who
had long lived in England as an exile, M. de Saint Evremond, must have
constantly taken part. The disjointed pieces of which Saint Evremond's
writings consist are tedious and superficial, but they reveal a mind
of much cultivation and considerable common sense. His judgement on
Perrault's Parallel is that the author "has discovered the defects of
the ancients better than he has made out the advantage of the moderns;
his book is good and capable of curing us of abundance of errors."
[Footnote: In a letter to the Duchess of Mazarin, Works, Eng. tr., iii.
418.] He was not a partisan. But his friend, Sir William Temple, excited
by the French depreciations of antiquity, rushed into the lists with
greater courage than discretion.

Temple was ill equipped for the controversy, though his Essay on
Ancient and Modern Learning (1690) is far from deserving the disdain of
Macaulay, who describes its matter as "ludicrous and contemptible to the
last degree." [Footnote: The only point in it which need be noted here
is that the author questioned the cogency of Fontenelle's argument, that
the forces of nature being permanent human ability is in all ages
the same. "May there not," he asks, "many circumstances concur to one
production that do not to any other in one or many ages?" Fontenelle
speaks of trees. It is conceivable that various conditions and accidents
"may produce an oak, a fig, or a plane-tree, that shall deserve to
be renowned in story, and shall not perhaps be paralleled in other
countries or times. May not the same have happened in the production,
growth, and size of wit and genius in the world, or in some parts or
ages of it, and from many more circumstances that contributed towards it
than what may concur to the stupendous growth of a tree or animal?"] And
it must be confessed that the most useful result of the Essay was the
answer which it provoked from Wotton. For Wotton had a far wider
range of knowledge, and a more judicious mind, than any of the other
controversialists, with the exception of Fontenelle; and in knowledge
of antiquity he was Fontenelle's superior. His inquiry stands out as
the most sensible and unprejudiced contribution to the whole debate. He
accepts as just the reasoning of Fontenelle "as to the comparative force
of the geniuses of men in the several ages of the world and of the equal
force