it, the human race will never fall into dotage and lose its earlier powers—'les hommes ne degenereront jamais!' Such are some of the arguments Fontenelle advances.
In the year in which Fontenelle's Poésies Pastorales appeared, Perrault began issuing his Parallèles des Anciens et des Modernes (1688-1696), which dealt at large with the comparative claims of the ancients and moderns in literature and the arts. Only one or two of his arguments are interesting in connection with the Battle of the Books, and these are mentioned in the notes to this volume.
Temple's Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1690)
In 1690[1] Sir William Temple published the second part of his Miscellanea. It consisted of four Essays: I. Upon ancient and modern learning, II. Upon the gardens of Epicurus, III. Upon heroic virtue, IV. Upon poetry. The first of them introduced into England the quarrel raging in France. It is true that for many years[2] a controversy on the question had been going
- ↑ For the date, see the Bibliography to this volume (p. 298.)
- ↑ Dr Johnson mentions its existence in the time of Milton.
