less. They are never without a classic or two in their pockets; they
stick to the old good sense; they read none of the modern trash; and will
show you, plainly, that no improvement has been made, in any one art or
science, these last seventeen hundred years. I would by no means have you
disown your acquaintance with the ancients: but still less would I have
you brag of an exclusive intimacy with them. Speak of the moderns without
contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry; judge them all by their
merits, but not by their ages; and if you happen to have an Elzevir
classic in your pocket neither show it nor mention it.

Some great scholars, most absurdly, draw all their maxims, both for
public and private life, from what they call parallel cases in the
ancient authors; without considering, that, in the first place, there
never were, since the creation of the world, two cases exactly parallel;
and, in the next place, that there never was a case stated, or even
known, by any historian, with every one of its circumstances; which,
however, ought to be known, in order to be reasoned from. Reason upon the
case itself, and the several circumstances that attend it, and act
accordingly; but not from the authority of ancient poets, or historians.
Take into your consideration, if you please, cases seemingly analogous;
but take them as helps only, not as guides. We are really so prejudiced
by our education, that, as the ancients deified their heroes, we deify
their madmen; of which, with all due regard for antiquity, I take
Leonidas and Curtius to have been two distinguished ones. And yet a solid
pedant would, in a speech in parliament, relative to a tax of two pence
in the pound upon some community or other, quote those two heroes, as
examples of what we ought to do and suffer for our country. I have known
these absurdities carried so far by people of injudicious learning, that
I should not be surprised, if some of them were to propose, while we are
at war with the Gauls, that a number of geese should be kept in the