author of Emile. Let us endeavour to
examine the question, neither with the cold prejudice of antiquity on
the one hand; nor on the other, with the too eager thirst of novelty,
and unbounded admiration of the geniuses, by whom it has been attacked.

When we look back to the venerable ancients, we behold a class of
writers, if not of a much higher rank, at least of a very different
character, from the moderns. One natural advantage they indisputably
possessed. The field of nature was all their own. It had not yet been
blasted by any vulgar breath, or touched with a sacrilegious hand. Its
fairest flowers had not been culled, and its choicest sweets rifled
before them. As they were not encumbered and hedged in with the
multitude of their predecessors, they did not servilely borrow their
knowledge from books; they read it in the page of the universe. They
studied nature in all her romantic scenes, and all her secret haunts.
They studied men in the various ranks of society, and in different
nations of the world. I might add to this several other advantages. Of
these the noble freedom of mind that was characteristic of the
republicans of Greece and Rome, and that has scarcely any parallel among
ourselves, would not be the least.

Agreeably to these advantages, they almost every where, particularly
among the Greeks, bear upon them the stamp of originality. All copies
are feeble and unmarked. They sacrifice the plainness of nature to the
gaudiness of ornament, and the tinsel of wit. But the ancients are full
of a noble and affecting simplicity. By one touch of nature and
observation they paint a scene more truly, than their successors are
able to do in whole wire-drawn pages. In description they are
unequalled. Their eloquence is fervent, manly and sonorous. Their
thoughts are just, natural, independent and profound. The pathos of
Virgil, and the sublimity of Homer, have never been surpassed. And as
their knowledge was not acquired in learned indolence, they knew how to
join the severest application with the brightest genius. Accordingly in
their style they have united simplicity, eloquence and harmony, in a
manner of which the moderns have seldom had even an idea. The
correctness of a Caesar, and the sonorous period of a Cicero; the
majesty of a Virgil, and the politeness of a Horace, are such as no
living language can express.

It is the remark of a certain old-fashioned writer, "The form of the
world passeth away." A cen