hundred years; but that they were totally extinguished with the ancient
Greek and Roman governments. Homer and Virgil could have no faults,
because they were ancient; Milton and Tasso could have no merit, because
they were modern. And I could almost have said, with regard to the
ancients, what Cicero, very absurdly and unbecomingly for a philosopher,
says with regard to Plato, 'Cum quo errare malim quam cum aliis recte
sentire'. Whereas now, without any extraordinary effort of genius, I have
discovered that nature was the same three thousand years ago as it is at
present; that men were but men then as well as now; that modes and
customs vary often, but that human nature is always the same. And I can
no more suppose that men were better, braver, or wiser, fifteen hundred
or three thousand years ago, than I can suppose that the animals or
vegetables were better then than they are now. I dare assert too, in
defiance of the favorers of the ancients, that Homer's hero, Achilles,
was both a brute and a scoundrel, and consequently an improper character
for the hero of an epic poem; he had so little regard for his country,
that he would not act in defense of it, because he had quarreled with
Agamemnon about a w---e; and then afterward, animated by private
resentment only, he went about killing people basely, I will call it,
because he knew himself invulnerable; and yet, invulnerable as he was, he
wore the strongest armor in the world; which I humbly apprehend to be a
blunder; for a horse-shoe clapped to his vulnerable heel would have been
sufficient. On the other hand, with submission to the favorers of the
moderns, I assert with Mr. Dryden, that the devil is in truth the hero of
Milton's poem; his plan, which he lays, pursues, and at last executes,
being the subject of the poem. From all which considerations I
impartially conclude that the ancients had their excellencies and their
defects, their virtues and their vices, just like the moderns; pedantry
and affectation of learning decide clearly in favor of the former; vanity
and ignorance, as peremptorily in favor of the latter. Religious