"
This reflection may be more justly applied to the ancients, and it may
with much greater truth be said; "The age will never again return,
when a Pericles, after walking with Plato in a portico, built by
Phidias, and painted by Apelles, might repair to hear a pleading of
Demosthenes, or a tragedy of Sophocles."
I shall next examine the other part of Addison's assertion, that the
moderns excell the ancients in all the arts of Ridicule, and assign
the reasons of this supposed excellence.
No. CXXXIII. Tuesday, February 12. 1754.
_At nostri proavi Plautinos et numeros et
Laudeveres sales; nimium patienter utrumque,
Ne dicam stule, mirati; si modo ego et vos
Scimus inurbanum lepido seponere dicto_.
HOR.
"And yet our fires with joy could Plautus hear;
Gay were his jests, his numbers charm'd their ear."
Let me not say too lavishly they prais'd;
But sure their judgment was full cheaply pleas'd,
If you or I with taste are haply blest,
To know a clownish from a courtly jest.
FRANCIS.
The fondness I have so frequently manifested for the ancients, has not
so far blinded my judgment, as to render me unable to discern, or
unwilling to acknowledge, the superiority of the moderns, in pieces of
Humour and Ridicule.
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