The great cause of the ancients versus the moderns is not yet disposed of; it has been at issue ever since the silver age, which succeeded the golden one. Men have always pretended that the good old times were much better than the present. Nestor, in the “Iliad,” wishing to insinuate himself, like a wise mediator, into the good opinion of Achilles and Agamemnon, begins with saying: “I have lived with better men than you; never have I seen, nor shall I ever see again, such great personages as Dryas, C?neus, Exadius, Polyphemus equal to the gods,” etc. Posterity has made ample amends to Achilles for Nestor’s bad compliment, so vainly admired by those who admire nothing but what is ancient. Who knows anything about Dryas? We have scarcely heard of Exadius or of C?neus; and as for Polyphemus equal to the gods, he has no very high reputation, unless, indeed, there was something divine in his having a great eye in the middle of his forehead, and eating the raw carcasses of mankind.

Lucretius does not hesitate to say that nature has degenerated:

Ipsa dedit dulces f?tus et pabula l?ta,

Qu? nunc vix nostro grandescunt aucta labore;

Conterimusque boves, et vires agricolarum, etc.

Antiquity is full of the praises of another antiquity still more remote:

Les hommes, en tout tems, ont pensé qu’ autrefois,

De longs ruisseaux de lait serpentaient dans nos bois;

La lune était plus grande, et la nuit moins obscure;

L’hiver se couronnait de fleurs et de verdure;

Se contemplait à l’aise, admirait son néant,

Et, formé pour agir, se plaisait à rien faire, etc.

Men have, in every age, believed that once

Long streams of milk ran winding through the woods;

The moon was larger and the night less dark;

Winter was crowned with flowers and trod on verdure;

Man, the world’s king, had nothing else to do

Than contemplate his utter worthlessness,

And, formed for action, took delight in sloth, etc.

Horace combats this prejudice with equal force and address in his fine epistle to Augustus. “Must our poems, then,” says he, “be like our wines, of which the oldest are always preferred?” He afterward says:

Indignor quidquam reprehendi, non quia crasse

Compositum illepideve putetur, sed quia nuper;

Nec veniam antiquis, sed honorem et pr?mia posci.

Ingeniis non ille favet plauditque sepultis,

Nostra sed impugnat, nos nostraque lividus odit.

I feel my honest indignation rise,

When, with affected air, a coxcomb cries:

“The work, I own, has elegance and ease,

But sure no modern should presume to please”;

Thus for his favorite ancients dares to claim,

Not pardon only, but rewards and fame.

Not to the illustrious dead his homage pays,

But envious robs the living of their praise.

— Francis.

On this subject the learned and ingenious Fontenelle expresses himself thus:

“The whole of the question of pre-eminence between the ancients and moderns, being once well understood, reduces itself to this: Were the trees which formerly grew in the country larger than those of the present day? If they were, Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes cannot be equalled in these latter ages; but if our trees are as large as those of former times, then can we equal Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes.

“But to clear up the paradox: If the ancients had stronger minds than ourselves, it must have been that the brains of those times were better disposed, were formed of firmer or more delicate fibres, or contained a larger portion of animal spirits. But how should the brains of those times have been better disposed? Had such been the case, the leaves would likewise have been larger and more beautiful; for if nature was then more youthful and vigorous, the trees, as well as the brains of men, would have borne testimony to that youth and vigor.”

With our illustrious academician’s leave, this is by no means the state of the question. It is not asked whether nature can at the present day produce as great geniuses, and as good works, as those of Greek and Latin antiquity, but whether we really have such. It is doubtless possible that there are oaks in the forest of Chantilly as large as those of Dodona; but supposing that the oaks of Dodona could talk, it is quite clear that they had a great advantage over ours, which, it is probable, will never talk.

La Motte, a man of wit and talent, who has merited applause in more than one kind of writing, has, in an ode full of happy lines, taken the part of the moderns. We give one of his stanzas:

Et pourquoi veut-on que j’encense

Ces prétendus Dieux dont je sors?

En moi la même intelligence

Fait mouvoir les mêmes ressorts.

Croit-on la nature bizarre,

Pour nous aujourd’hui plus avare

Que pour les Grecs et les Romains?

De nos a?nés mère idolatre,

N’est-elle plus que la maratre

Dure et grossière des humains?

And pray, why must I bend the knee

To these pretended Gods of ours?

The same intelligence in me

Gives vigor to the self-same powers.

Think ye that nature is capricious,

Or towards us more avaricious

Than to our Greek and Roman sires —

To them an idolizing mother,

While in their children she would smother

The sparks of intellectual fires?

He might be answered thus: Esteem your ancestors, without adoring them. You have intelligence and powers of invention, as Virgil and Horace had; but perhaps it is not absolutely the same intelligence. Perhaps their talents were superior to — yours; they exercised them, too, in a language richer and more harmonious than our modern tongues, which are a mixture of corrupted Latin, with the horrible jargon of the Celts.

Nature is not capricious; but it is possible that she had given the Athenians a soil and sky better adapted than Westphalia and the Limousin to the formation of geniuses of a certain order. It is also likely that the government of Athens, seconding the favorable climate, put ideas into the head of Demosthenes which the air of Clamar and La Grenouillere combined with the government of Cardinal de Richelieu, did not put into the heads of Omer Talon and Jerome Bignon.

Some one answered La Motte’s lines by the following:

Cher la Motte, imite et revère

Ces Dieux dont tu ne descends pas;

Si tu crois qu’ Horace est ton père,

Il a fait des enfans ingrats.

La nature n’est point bizarre;

Pour Danchet elle est fort avare,

Mais Racine en fut bien traité;

Tibulle était guidé par elle,

Mais pour notre ami La Chapelle,

Hélas! qu’elle a peu de bonté!

Revere and imitate, La Motte,

Those Gods from whom thou’rt not descended;

If thou by Horace wert begot,

His children’s manners might be mended.

Nature is not at all capricious;

To Danchet she is avaricious,

But she was liberal to Racine;

She used Tibullus very well,

Though to our good friend La Chapelle,

Alas! she is extremely mean!

This dispute, then, resolves itself into a question of fact. Was antiquity more fertile in great monuments of genius of every kind, down to the time of Plutarch, than modern ages have been, from that of the house of Medicis to that of Louis XIV., inclusively?

The Chinese, more than two hundred years before our Christian era, built their great wall, which could not save them from invasion by the Tartars. The Egyptians had, four thousand years before, burdened the earth with their astonishing pyramids, the bases of which covered ninety thousand square feet. No one doubts that, if it were thought advisable to undertake such useless works at the present day, they might be accomplished by lavishing plenty of money. The great wall of China is a monument of fear; the pyramids of Egypt are monuments of vanity and superstition; both testify the great patience of the two people, but no superior genius. Neither the Chinese nor the Egyptians could have made a single statue like those formed by our living sculptors.

Sir William Temple, who made a point of degrading the moderns, asserts that they have nothing in architecture that can be compared to the temples of Greece and Rome; but, Englishman as he was, he should have admitted that St. Peter’s at Rome is incomparably more beautiful than the capitol.

There is something curious in the assurance with which he asserts that there is nothing new in our astronomy, nor in our knowledge of the human body, except, says he, it be the circulation of the blood. The love of his opinion, founded on his extreme self-love, makes him forget the discovery of Jupiter’s satellites, of Saturn’s five moons and ring, of the sun’s rotation on his axis, the calculation of the positions of three thousand stars, the development by Kepler and Newton of the law by which the heavenly bodies are governed, and the knowledge of a thousand other things of which the ancients did not even suspect the possibility. The discoveries in anatomy have been no less numerous. A new universe in miniature, discovered by the microscope, went as nothing with Sir William Temple; he closed his eyes to the wonders of his contemporaries, and opened them only to admire ancient ignorance.

He even goes so far as to regret that we have nothing left of the magic of the Indians, Chald?ans, and Egyptians. By this magic, he understands a profound knowledge of nature, which enabled them to work miracles — of which, however, he does not mention one, because the truth is that they never worked any. “What,” says he, “has become of the charms of that music which so often enchanted men and beasts, fishes, birds, and serpents, and even changed their nature?” This enemy to his own times believed implicitly in the fable of “Orpheus,” and, it should seem, had never heard of the fine music of Italy, nor even of that of France, which do not charm serpents, it is true, but which do charm the ears of the connoisseur.

It is still more strange that, having all his life cultivated the belles-lettres, he reasons no better on our good authors than on our philosophers. He considers Rabelais a great man, and speaks of “les Amours des Gaules” (“The Loves of the Gauls”), as one of his best works. He was, nevertheless, a learned man, a courtier, a man of considerable wit, and an ambassador, who had made profound reflections on all that he had seen; he possessed great knowledge; one prejudice sufficed to render all this merit unavailing.

Boileau and Racine, when writing in favor of the ancients against Perrault, showed more address than Sir William Temple. They knew better than to touch on astronomy and physical science. Boileau seeks only to vindicate Homer against Perrault, at the same time gliding adroitly over the faults of the Greek poet, and the slumber with which Horace reproaches him. He strove to turn Perrault, the enemy of Homer, into ridicule. Wherever Perrault misunderstands a passage, or renders inaccurately a passage which he understands, Boileau, seizing this little advantage, falls upon him like a redoubtable enemy, and beats him as an ignoramus — a dull writer. But it is not at all improbable that Perrault, though often mistaken, was frequently right in his remarks on the contradictions, the repetitions, the uniformity of the combats, the long harangues in the midst of them, the indecent and inconsistent conduct of the gods in the poem — in short, on all the errors into which this great poet is asserted to have fallen. In a word, Boileau ridicules Perrault much more than he justifies Homer.

Racine used the same artifice, for he was at least as malignant as Boileau. Although he did not, like the latter, make his fortune by satire, he enjoyed the pleasure of confounding his enemies on the occasion of a small and very pardonable mistake into which they had fallen respecting Euripides, and, at the same time, of feeling much superior to Euripides himself. He rallies the same Perrault and his partisans upon their critique on the Alceste of Euripides, because these gentlemen had unfortunately been deceived by a faulty edition of Euripides, and had taken some replies of Admetus for those of Alceste; but Euripides does not the less appear in all countries to have done very wrong in making Admetus use such extraordinary language to his father, whom he violently reproaches for not having died for him:

“How!” replies the king, his father; “whom, pray, are you addressing so haughtily? Some Lydian or Phrygian slave? Know you not that I am free, and a Thessalian? (Fine language, truly, for a king and a father!) You insult me as if I were the meanest of men. Where is the law which says fathers must die for their children? Each for himself here below. I have fulfilled all my obligations toward you. In what, then, do I wrong you? Do I ask you to die for me? The light is dear to you; is it less so to me? You accuse me of cowardice! Coward that you yourself are! You were not ashamed to urge your wife to save you, by dying for you. After this, does it become you to treat as cowards those who refuse to do for you what you have not the courage to do yourself? Believe me, you ought rather to be silent. You love life; others love it no less. Be assured that if you continue to abuse me, you shall have reproaches, and not false ones, in return.”

He is here interrupted by the chorus, with: “Enough! Too much on both sides! Old man, cease this ill language toward your son.”

One would think that the chorus should rather give the son a severe reprimand for speaking in so brutal a manner to his father.

All the rest of the scene is in the same style:

Pheres (to his son).

— Thou speakest against thy father, without his having injured thee.

Admetus.

— Oh! I am well aware that you wish to live as long as possible.

Pheres.

— And art thou not carrying to the tomb her who died for thee?

Admetus.

— Ah! most infamous of men! ‘Tis the proof of thy cowardice!

Pheres.

— At least, thou canst not say she died for me.

Admetus.

— Would to heaven that thou wert in a situation to need my assistance!

Pheres.

— Thou wouldst do better to think of marrying several wives, who may die that thy life may be lengthened.

After this scene a domestic comes and talks to himself about the arrival of Hercules.

“A stranger,” says he, “opens the door of his own accord; places himself without more ado at table; is angry because he is not served quick enough; fills his cup every moment with wine, and drinks long draughts of red and of white; constantly singing, or rather howling, bad songs, without giving himself any concern about the king and his wife, for whom we are mourning. He is, doubtless, some cunning rogue, some vagabond, or assassin.”

It seems somewhat strange that Hercules should be taken for a cunning rogue, and no less so that Hercules, the friend of Admetus, should be unknown to the household. It is still more extraordinary that Hercules should be ignorant of Alceste’s death, at the very time when they were carrying her to her tomb.

Tastes must not be disputed, but such scenes as these would, assuredly, not be tolerated at one of our country fairs.

Brumoy, who has given us the Théatre des Grecs (Greek Theatre), but has not translated Euripides with scrupulous fidelity, does all he can to justify the scene of Admetus and his father: the argument he makes use of is rather singular.

First, he says, that “there was nothing offensive to the Greeks in these things which we regard as horrible and indecent, therefore it must be admitted that they were not exactly what we take them to have been, in short, ideas have changed.” To this it may be answered that the ideas of polished nations on the respect due from children to their fathers have never changed. He adds, “Who can doubt that in different ages ideas have changed relative to points of morality of still greater importance?” We answer, that there are scarcely any points of greater importance.

“A Frenchman,” continues he, “is insulted; the pretended good sense of the French obliges him to run the risk of a duel, and to kill or be killed, in o............