The Johns Hopkins University Press and American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Eighteenth-Century Studies.http://www.jstor.orgAmerican Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS)Ancients and Moderns Reconsidered Author(s): Joseph M. Levine Source:Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 72-89Published by: . Sponsor:The Johns Hopkins University Press American Society for .Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS)Stable URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/2738403Accessed: 10-07-2015 18:35 UTCYour use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jspJSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsAncientsand Moderns Reconsidered JOSEPH M. LEVINE THEREIS APOINT OF VIEW from which the whole history ofideas canappeartobeastrugglebetweenoldandnew,betweenthe ancients and the moderns. But the contest that broke out afresh and with especialacrimony in the1690s was unusual in that itwas to alargeextentadeliberateresumption ofaveryspecificsetof rivalries whose outlines were first laid down in Antiquity and which hadcometolifeagainduringtheItalianRenaissancewiththe revival ofclassicalculture. Thestory ofthebattleofthebooks is wellknown, ifonlyfromthepagesofJonathan Swift.But,like many atalewithaliterary character, itsreality in factremains a little doubtful and its historical meaning more than a little obscure. Strangelyenough,thebattleofthebookshasneverreallybeen recounted in detail and itbadly requires a new perspective. Above all, it needs to be set into a framework ofintellectual history as an episode in the age-old dispute between the ancients and the moderns. Anditneedstobetold,notmerelyinoutlinefromafewhalf- remembered classics,butinfullhistorical detail,calling upon the manuscripts aswellastheprinted sources. Ifthatistoomuchto attempt in a brief compass, it may at least be worth proposing here thatitwasaneventofmoresignificancethanhasusuallybeen recognized, thatiturgently requires reevaluation, and thatitpos- sessed a meaning that outlived its own immediate context and still may speak to us. For the most part, notice of the battle has been confined hitherto eithertoprotagonists likeSwiftwhodeliberatelymisconstrued it or to students of literature who have seen it merely as a gloss upon the poets. The first, in their eagerness to secure the victory, tended 72 This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsANCIENTSANDMODERNSRECONSIDERED73 both tounderestimate and tomisunderstand their adversaries and thusobscured therealissuesand thefactthatthequarrel ended in a draw. Moreover, their personal idiosyncracies and ad hominem arguments seemtohave distracted theircontemporaries from the real issues, as theyhave continued to bedevil their successors. The second, limited by the inclinations of their discipline, have not want- edto look much beyond theprinted textsand their purely literary meanings and have thus failedtoseethelarger settingand signif- icance ofthe quarrel. Nordoes itappear that historians have done muchbetter,contentsinceMacaulay'stimeeithertodismissthe whole affair as trivial, or with their eyesfixedfirmly upon alater time,toignore italtogether. Somost recentwriters would appear toagree withIra Wade who oncedescribed itasa"tempest ina teapot."' PerhapsthisiswhytheEnglishepisodehasneverreceiveda comprehensive account,although rivers ofink were spilled during thebattleanditisrarely overlooked inthehistory ofliterature.2 The nearest thing, a book and some articles by Richard Foster Jones whichconfineditselflargelytothebackground, isnowseriously dated, despite the claims of a recent editor that they are definitive.3 Jones wasapioneer inhisinterest intherelationship between lit- erature andscienceintheseventeenthcenturyandheawoke at- tention to an important set of problems in thehistory ofideas. But he limited himself to only one aspect of the quarrel and never really did describe its climactic episodes, preferring instead to concentrate upon the preliminaries. Hewas, besides, partisan and limited in his researches. Nothingmuch seems to have been accomplished since, although some valuable work has been done on the continental quer- 'T. B. Macaulay, "Francis Atterbury," MiscellaneousWritings, 2 vols. (London, 1860), II, 209-26;Ira Wade, The IntellectualOrigins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press,1971),p.627.Typically, Paul Hazard omitted thequerellealtogetherinhisinfluential work, The EuropeanMind1680-1715, trans. J.LewisMay (London: HollisandCarter, 1953). 2The one attempt to survey thewhole ground, now over ahundred years old, is HippolyteRigault,Histoiredelaquerelledesanciensetdesmodernes(Paris, 1856), which, however, treats the English episode only incidentally (pp. 277-352). Thebestliterary accountofthebattleisprobably A.C.GuthkelchandN.D. Smith,Introd., ATale ofaTub, by Jonathan Swift(Oxford: Clarendon, 1958). 3See thesketchofJonesbyMarjorie H.NicholsoninR.F.Jones etal.,The Seventeenth Century (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press,1951),pp.1-9. This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions74EIGHTEENTH-CENTURYSTUDIES elleand itsantecedents.Itisundoubtedly past timetoreview the whole subjectand toreassess itssignificance.4 For Jones the battle of the books was exclusively an English affair isolated from thecontinental querelleand rooted in peculiarly En- glishintellectualconditionsliketheriseofthenewscienceand what he vaguely called "puritanism."5He dismissed the literary side oftheaffairastrivial inorder toconcentrate attention upon phi- losophy and natural science.Nodoubt hedidreal service thusin suggesting that theEnglish episode was not merely an appendix to the French-asFrench scholars had always insistedand in calling attention totheimportance ofFrancis Bacon,theRoyalSociety, and seventeenth-century natural philosophy.6But his thesis was ex- treme,tosaytheleast,andintheendthoroughly unsatisfactory. Infact,theEnglish quarrel cannot beunderstood without itscon- tinental origins; nor didtheEnglishcombatants ever losecontact with events across the Channel. Thus the first of the English ancients in the battle of the books, Sir William Temple, noticed himself that atleasthalfofhis inspiration was a tract by theFrenchman, Fon- 4SeeJosephM.Levine,"Ancients,ModernsandHistory: TheContinuity of English Historical Writing in theLater Seventeenth Century," Studiesin Change andRevolution,ed.PaulKorshin (Menston,England: ScolarPress,1972),pp. 43-75,andLevine,Dr.Woodward's Shield.History,Scienceand Satirein Au- gustanEngland(Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. ofCalifornia Press,1977).For thecontinental background, seeHansBaron, "The querelleoftheAncientsand theModerns as aProblem for Renaissance Scholarship," Journalofthe History ofIdeas,20(1959),3-22;August Buck, "Aus der Vorgeschichte der Querelle des anciens et des modernesin Mittelalter und Renaissance,"BibliothWqued'Humanisme et Renaissance,20(1958),527-41;Giacinto Margiotta, Le Origini Italianede la Querelle desanciens etdesmodernes (Rome: EditriceStudium,1953); Jose An- tonioMaravall,Antiguosymodernos(Madrid:SociedaddeEstudiosPublica- ciones,1966). 'JonesfirstsetouthisideasinTheBackgroundoftheBattleoftheBooks (Washington UniversityStudies,7,1920),anabridged andamendedversion of which appears in The Seventeenth Century, pp. 10-40.He developed them further in Ancients and Moderns: A Studyof the Riseofthe ScientificMovement in 17th Century England(1936;2nd ed.,St.Louis: Washington University Press,1961). Other articles supplementing these views appears in The Seventeenth Century and TheTriumph oftheEnglishLanguage(Stanford,Calif.:StanfordUniv.Press, 1953). 6Rigault, pp.332,351; AntoineAdam,Histoiredelalitterature franqaise au xviiesiecle,5vols. (Paris: Domat,1954-57),III,125ff.Theimportant work of HubertGillot,LaquerelledesanciensetdesmodernesenFrance(Paris:R. Champion, 1914),treats only theFrench quarrel; there is an English summary in Arthur Tilley, The Decline ofthe Age of Louis XIV (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,1929). This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsANCIENTSANDMODERNSRECONSIDERED75 tenelle,and helater calledupon Racineand Boileau toback him up7 while thefirst oftheEnglish moderns, William Wotton, found equal support abroad, first in therecent work ofCharles Perrault, whole passages of which he transcribed into his own book, ultimately in the earlier Italian, Alessandro Tassoni.8 Atno stage,even in the preliminaries, were theEnglishparticipants unaware ofwhat was happening on the Continent. Thus the Elizabethans who first began toconsider theproblem (likeGabriel Harvey,SamuelDaniel,or Walter Raleigh), all seem to have found their bearings in the Italian Renaissanceandthesixteenth-centuryFrenchquerelle,someof which had already been turned into English.9 In the next generation, George Hakewill, one of Jones's most important moderns, provides another example of the missing background.Writing in 1627, Hake- willseemstohaveborrowed oneofhisbestideasdirectlyfrom theSpanish humanist, Juan LuisVives(asBenJonson wastodo alittlelater),andthentohavepassedhisinspiration alongtoa contemporary Frenchman, theSieurdeRampalle,aswellastoa later generation ofEnglishmen. Asamatter offact,theideathat heemployed,thatthemoderns couldberepresented vis-a-vis the ancients as dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants, was a thought that seems to goback at leastas far as thetwelfthcentury, to the medievalhumanistsoftheschoolofChartres.Norwasitsoon forgotten; itappears tohave been usedatleastoncein every gen- eration thereafter right down until the time of the quarrelits con- 7"An Essay upon Ancientand Modern Learning," Miscellanea,Pt.2(London, 1690).p.4:"Some Thoughts upon Reviewing theEssay ofAncientand Modern Learning," Miscellanea,Pt.3 (London, 1701), pp. 209-11.Another French influ- encemayhavebeenTemple'sfriend,Saint-Evremond; seeWalterM.Daniels, Saint-EvremondenAngleterre(Versailles: L.Luce,1907),pp.17,104-9.For Fontenelle, see Robert Shackleton, ed., Fontenelle: Entretiens sur la Pluralitedes Mondes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1955), with the text of the digression on the ancients and themoderns (1688),pp.159-76. 8Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (London, 1694), A Defense of the Reflections(London, 1705), pp. 34-35.For Perrault and Tassoni, seenote 24, below. 9See, for example,Louis LeRoy,Of the Interchangeable Course orVariety of Things in theWhole World, trans. Robert Ashley(London, 1594), and Aristotles Politiques(London,1598); Henrie Stephens, AWorld ofWonders: Or an Intro- ductionTouching theConformitie ofAncient and ModernWonders, trans. R.C. (London, 1607). This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions76EIGHTEENTH-CENTURYSTUDIES venient ambiguity making it equally useful to both sides. 10Certainly theappearance ofacommon setof'progressivist' ideasatalmost the same time in Hakewill and Rampalle, in the Italian, Lancellotti, and the Scottish Pole who studied in England and taught at Leyden, John Johnstone, suggeststhethoroughly international character of theideas that were shortly tobe revived in thebattle ofthebooks andtheirdeeproots inthecultureoftheRenaissance.Arecent work on Spain in thegolden agehas only helped tospread thenet wider, although itwaslong known that Tassoni for one wasantic- ipated bythesixteenth-century Spaniard, Christobal Villalon; and that when his own work was turned into French, itbecameone of theoccasions for thelater seventeenth century querelle."1 Moreover, thequarrel really was about literature and history at least as much as it was about scienceand philosophy, especially as it drew to a climax. Swift's own contributions, ATale of aTub and The Battleofthe Books,like Temple's before him, show almost no interestinanything else;andthecontestaboutliterary imitation went on merrily for more than a century after thebattle,blissfully unaware that it had been concluded. Thus earlier students like Joel Spingarn werenotentirelywrong whentheyarguedforthecen- tralityofthebattleofthebooks inthehistoryofliterature and criticism, although they too undoubtedly saw it too narrowly.'2Not only did theyoverlook Jones's emphasis on scienceand philosophy '?Dwarfs and giants may be traced in the following (besides Buck, note 4 above): Foster E.Guyer, "C'est nous qui sommes lesanciens," Modern Language Notes, 36(1921);"TheDwarfsontheGiant'sShoulders," ibid.,45(1930),398-402; George Sarton and Raymond Klibansky, "Standing on theShoulders ofGiants," Isis,24,26(1935-36),107-9,147-49;J. deGhellinck, "Nani etGigantes," Bul- letinduCange,18 (1945),25-29;Edouard Jeauneau, "Nanigigantum Humeris insidentes: Essaid'interpretation deBernard deChartres," Vivarium, 5(1967), 79-99;RoyS.Wolper, "The Rhetoric ofGunpowder and theIdeaofProgress," Journal ofthe Historyof Ideas31 (1970),594; Elizabeth Gossman, "Antiqui und Moderniin12Jahrhundert," MiscellaneaMedievalia,9(1974),40-57;A.G. Molland, "Medieval Ideas of ScientificProgress,"Journal of the History of Ideas, 39 (1978),561-78.Much of the story is told in Robert Merton's entertaining book, On the Shouldersof Giants. A Shandean Postscript (NewYork: Free Press, 1965). "Maravall (note4,above), p.595,relying on Alfredo Giannini, "II libro Xdei Pensieridiversi di A.Tassoni," Revue Hispanique,41(1917).Seealso Abraham Keller, "Ancients and Moderns in theEarly SeventeenthCentury," Modern Lan- guageQuarterly,11 (1950),79-82.Hakewill's work, An Apologie forthe Power and Providence of God, appeared first in 1627; Johnstone's De NaturaeConstantia in1632; Lancellotti's L'Hoggidiin1637; and Rampalle's L'Erreur Combattue in 1641. '2Joel E. Spingarn, Critical Essaysofthe Seventeenth Century, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1908-9),I,lxxxviiiff. This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsANCIENTSANDMODERNSRECONSIDERED77 but theypretty muchignored therelationship ofliterature tolife, somuchmoreintimateinthisperiod thaninourown,therela- tionship, for example,ofliterature topoliticsand education. Itlooks as though what led Jones astray were some unexamined assumptions that were nearly axiomatic in his own day, i.e., that the moderns hadnotonlywonbut"ought tohavewon" thequarrel; that "utilitarianism, humanitarianism, democracy, and the like," all thebestthings in Jones's world, were given exclusivebirth bythe moderns oftheseventeenth century and, although impeded some- howbyaneoclassicalcenturybetween,hadeventually"resumed their onward march" to his own time; and finally by his unwilling- ness to allow either the reality or the significance of any other issues inthequarrel exceptfor thetriumphant progress ofthenewsci- ence."3In this respect he seemed eager to reduce even the changes in English styleduring theseventeenth century and themany dis- putesaboutlanguagethensimplytotheimpactofscienceupon literature, despite the fact that Morris Croll and others were finding averydifferentinspiration forthem.'4 Thushehadneither time nor patiencefor theseventeenth-century ancients whom hefound willfully obscure and "conservative" and hemissedboth theforce and the meaning of their arguments altogether. Nor did it ever seem tobother himthatitwas theleaders ofthenation inpoliticsand society,aswellasalltheimportant writers, whoinclinedtothe classics and despite generations of argument remained unconvinced about the usefulness of modernity. Like other historians of progress in his time, like Bury in England, for example, or Delvaille in France, both ofwhom included chapters on thequarrel in their influential books, Joneslooked onlytotheeventualoutcomeandreadback into the quarrel the meaning that he wished to find and the victory that hefelt-butonly retrospectivelymust happen."5Heoffered "Ancients andModerns, pp. 272,338n. 14Jones,Triumph, p.323,andarticlesreprinted from thePublicationsofthe Modern Language Association(1930)and The Journal of Englishand Germanic Philology(1932)inThe Seventeenth Century, pp. 75-110,143-60.For criticism, seeCroll in PhilologicalQuarterly,10 (1931),184-86and Nethercotin PMLA, 46(1931),962-64,with Jones's reply, 965-67.For other views, implicitly critical, seeR.S.Crane, The Ideaofthe Humanities,2vols. (Chicago: Univ. ofChicago Press,1967),I,72-89,andW.FraserMitchell,EnglishPulpitOratory from Andrews toTillotson(London: SPCK,1932),pp. 394-96. "5J. B. Bury, The IdeaofProgress (London: Macmillan,1920),Chs. iv-v; Jules Delvaille,Essaisurl'histoiredel'ideede progres(Paris: F. Alcan,1910)Ch.v. This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions78EIGHTEENTH-CENTURYSTUDIES inbriefakindof'Whig'intellectualhistorytomatchthemore familiar political counterpartand with all the same shortcomings. Well, we have lost some confidence since Jones wrote, not merely in thepast and future, but more especiallyin theprogressive con- sequences of our modern science. And while we would probably not want totakerefugeintheoldnotion ofdecaywhichwas,for ex- ample, argued by Hakewill's opponent Bishop Goodman, or by Tem- plehimself,nevertheless weare undoubtedly better placed now to understandjust what it was that the ancients were saying.'6It seems suddenlysurprising thatnotonlyJonesalonebutnearlyallthe other historians ofthequarrel in England and outside should have paidsolittleattentiontowhatwas,afterall,fullyone-halfthe argument. Naturally,therefore, theymisunderstood theevent,for the ancients were not simply defenders of tradition against the new, they had in factcome onto the European scene in England as else- where as innovators, humanists, in revolt against the culture of their own(latemedieval)times.Thus,paradoxically, anancientcould in certain circumstances appear to be a modern, as we shall see the moderns, more closelyexamined,couldsometimesturn outtobe ancients. In thebattle ofthebooks theancients were theself-con- sciouscontinuators oftheRenaissanceandweredetermined like their predecessors to exalt and to imitate the pastbut not any past and certainly not that medieval past which was to them all Gothic and barbarousrather thatspecialcorner ofthepastwhichthey demarked asclassicalantiquity and towhichtheyattachedape- culiarly practical value. It is only by beginning with the proposition thattheculture ofAntiquity, liketheculture oftheRenaissance, was a genuine and vigorous response to the world of events, an affair ofpracticeand notsimplyofartand certainly nomereaberra- tionthatonecanappreciatehowitlivedonforcenturyafter century to withstand theonslaught ofvarious forms ofmodernity. Ahistory ofthequarrel must begin therefore with theancients. But here atonceweencounter adifficulty,for itisapparent that thecultureofAntiquitywasnotinfactonesinglehomogeneous entity any more than that revival which forms the immediate back- drop to our quarrel. In fact, the ancients of1700, like their humanist predecessors, rarely hearkened back to all the ancients of Antiquity but preferred simply toselectthosethattheyfound usefuland to "6GodfreyGoodman,The FallofMan(London,1616). This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsANCIENTSANDMODERNSRECONSIDERED79 ignore therest.In1700,for example,asin Antiquityitself,there was a profound division between those who took philosophy as the crown ofeducation and cultureand thosewho preferred rhetoric, eachwiththeirallieddisciplines. We havebeenwellreminded of this division in antique culture in the monumental volumes of Jaeger and Marrou, ifwedidnotknow italready, asdidtheeighteenth century, directly from ancient writers like Plato, where in dialogue after dialogue, philosopher is pitted against sophist.'7 And we know that the Renaissance saw a resumption of just such a contest in the rivalry between humanist rhetoric and scholastic logic that appears from firsttolastintheperiod, fromPetrarch through Valla and Politian toErasmus. Whatweareindanger offorgettingisthat this enmity did not ceasewith thesixteenthcentury but remained a persistent feature of the European intellectual landscape through- out the early modern period. Asa consequence, there were at least two different kinds of ancients in 1700, those who (to simplify) were eagertofollow Platoor Aristotleand thosewho preferred Cicero or Quintilian, and theydid not always agree. Thequarrel between theancientsandthemoderns wasthusprecededbyalongand acrimonious contest among theancients themselves and the attack upon Aristotle was by itself (and despite Jones) no simple indication of modernity. Indeed the backward-lookingRenaissance humanists and the seventeenth-century ancients were as hostile to that ancient writer as they were to any ofthe'new' philosophers. It was indeed possible to denigrate Aristotle and at the very same time, like Tem- ple,toexaltCicero and theclassicalpoets.Itwas, ofcourse, also possible to exalt ancient philosophy and to decry or ignore classical literature. But itseems hardly possible to understand thebattle of the books without first seeing just what this long-standing antipathy among theancients was about and how itwas renewed during the early modern period. But ifthere were atleasttwo different kinds ofantique culture atodds witheachother intheyearsbefore1700,there were also at least two different kinds of modern challenge. The first occurred '7WernerJaeger, Paideia:The IdealsofGreek Culture, trans. Gilbert Highet, 3vols.(Oxford: BasilBlackwell,1944);HenriMarrou, AHistoryofEducation inAntiquity,trans.GeorgeLamb(London: SheedandWard,1956)and Saint Augustinetlafindelacultureantique(Bibliothequedesecoles franqaises d'Athenes et Rome,fasc.145,1938-49).Someoftherelevant Platonic dialogues wereconvenientlyassembledandtranslatedbyAndreDacierandturnedinto English in1701asTheWorks ofPlatoAbridg'd. This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions80EIGHTEENTH-CENTURYSTUDIES within the camp of the rhetoricians when the authority of the clas- sical authors was questioned, first by those who argued for a more liberal kind ofLatinimitation againstthepedanticclaimsofthe 'Ciceronians,' then by those moderns who preferred the vernacular altogether. Once again, the groundwork was prepared in Antiquity where the argument over style and imitation, over the new as against thetraditional eloquence,hadbecomecommonplace, particularly in lateclassicaltimes.So,for example,when Tacitus inthelittle dialogue on oratory thatisusually attributed tohim,debatedthe virtuesofCiceroasagainstamore'modern' kindofLatin,the conciseand pointed styleoftheEmpire, hewasrehearsing argu- mentswhichwere toresound againfrom theItalianRenaissance totheeighteenthcentury.AnditisnoaccidentthatErasmus's famous dialogue, the Ciceronianus, where the arguments of Tacitus are repeated withmany other classicalborrowings, wasreprinted atOxford in1693, on thevery eve ofthebattle ofthebooks. Itis a familiar paradox of our quarrel that the moderns (in this case the anti-Ciceronians) should findsome oftheir inspiration in thevery classical works that they were diminishing; they generally conceded more totheancients thattheywere willing to admit. Inthesameway, but evenmore noisily, theargument over the volgare, i.e., whether to prefer the modern languages to the ancient tongues,developedwherever Antiquitywasrevived,inItalyand Spain, France and England, and no doubt elsewhere, from thetre- cento to the sixteenth century down to the battle of the books where both Temple and Wotton had to take their stand, dividing the world of rhetoric and poetic into still another world of ancients and mod- erns. Yeteven more intriguingly, perhaps, thequarrel was pressed right into the vernaculars themselves where it became a contest now astowhethertotransform English(forexample)intoarotund Ciceronian or an elliptical pointed language, whether or not, in the words ofGeorge Williamson, to take theSenecan amble.18Ifstyle reflects the manor at any rate his cultureit is hardly necessary to add that these relentless literary disputes had a larger significance than first appears and that may account for their singular acerbity and persistence. '8George Williamson,The SenecanAmble:AStudyinProse fromBaconto Collier (Chicago: Univ. ofChicago Press,1951).Seealso Morris W. Croll, Style, Rhetoric and Rhythm,ed. J. Max Patrick and R.0.Evans (Princeton: Princeton Univ.Press,1966). This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsANCIENTSANDMODERNSRECONSIDERED81 Buttherewasasecondchallenge.Iftheauthorityofancient rhetoric was questioned by modern rhetoricians, so too ancient phi- losophy was deliberately countered now by thenew natural philos- ophiesofBacon,Descartes,and thelike.Aboveall,theAristotle of the schoolmen was calledinto question and found wanting, even thoughAristotlecontinued tofurnish muchofthebasicmaterial of the university and the training of the theologians and (even more awkwardly) an alternative Aristotle of rhetoric and poetic was fresh- ly instituted. Here, as in the other camp, the depth of the rebellion against classicalauthority was amatter ofdegreeand therewere only afewwho were ready toforesake theancientsaltogether. It was Bacon, after all, who wrote De SapientiaVeterumand Newton who found that his new physics had been anticipated in Antiquity.19 The 'perennial philosophy' was not easily dismissed. The Cambridge Platonists, Cudworth and More, and their many allies,Theophilus Gale,Edward Stillingfleet,evenThomas Burnet, whose Archaeo- logia Temple could now claim for his side, all wrote massive volumes in favor ofeither a priscatheologiaor an ancient philosophy that wentback behind theGreeks tothegreatEastern sages,Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster, even to Moses or Noah.20For some of these men-forCudworth, for example-Hobbesand Descartes,for all theirmodern pretensions, werenothing more thanancients,mere revivers ofclassicalatomismandatheismrather thaninnovators, and thewhole struggle ofideasintheseventeenth century looked tohim(however unfairly) likenothing more than aresumption of ancientconflict.Moreover, thisconviction inananterior wisdom, aswellasanancientfolly,longremained vigorous, outlivingthe battle of the books and appearing in such popular and representative works as theChevalier Ramsay'sTravels ofCyrus (1727)and the '9Bacon is,ofcourse, evenbetterknown for hisadvocacy ofthemoderns, but thiswas ambivalent, despitehisclaimintheAdvancement ofLearning thatthe moderns were thetrue ancients. For Newton'sview thathehad been anticipated in Antiquity by the Egyptians and the pre-Socratic philosophers, see J. E. McGuire and P.M.Rattansi,"NewtonandthePipesofPan," NotesandRecordsofthe RoyalSociety,21(1966),104-43. 20Fortheperennial philosophy generally,seeFrancesYates,Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1964); D. P. Walker, The AncientTheology(Ithaca,N.Y.:Cornell Univ. Press,1972).For Bacon, see Charles W. Lemmi, The Classical Deitiesin Bacon (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press,1933); for Newton,seeMcGuireandRattansi.For theneoplatonists and antiquity there is still no comprehensive account but there is a helpful bibliography in C.A.Patrides,TheCambridge Platonists(London: Edward Arnold,1969). This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions82EIGHTEENTH-CENTURYSTUDIES Universal History (1737-44).21Nevertheless, as Jones saw correctly, itwas some ofthenatural philosophers who didmount one ofthe chief challenges to Antiquity, although characteristically he left out theFrench, despitethefactthatthemost radical ofthemoderns, DescartesandMalebranche,werewellknown andinfluentialin England and early translated. Nowthesetwomodern movements, therevolt againstclassical rhetoric and the revolt against classical philosophy, needed not and oftendidnotcoincidebecauseofthelong-standing antipathy be- tweenrhetoric andphilosophy ofeverykind, althoughtobesure there were frequent points ofcontact.Theneoplatonists were not muchinterested inCicero or classicalimitation and onthewhole thewitshadnousefor eitherancientor modern philosophy. The quarrel between the ancients and the moderns had, therefore, to be fought out over different objectives in largely different arenas. But if all this has the effectof complicating matters far beyond anything that Jones imagined, itappears that there was stillone more issue that he overlooked altogether, another controversy that was rooted in therevival ofAntiquityand thatfor atimecameeven to over- shadow therest.Itwas thequarrel over 'philology.' Thisproblem seemstohaveoriginated during theRenaissance in an unanticipated opposition that developed out of the very success ofhumanist grammarians andrhetoricians inrecovering andelu- cidatingtheancientauthors. Atfirst,itistrue, allwere alliedin thebasiceffortofexhuming and imitating theclassics,in forging anew anciennete; buttheprocessofrecoverysoonadvancedto formidableproportions asthetechniquesofgrammaticalcriti- cismorwhatcametobeknown asphilology-weresharpened andasthegenerations addedtothestockofantiqueknowledge. Whenthishappened, classicalscholarship andclassicalimitation found themselves growing insidiously and unexpectedly at odds. On theonehand,theveryinstrumentsofclassicalscholarship,the 2"RalphCudworth's True IntellectualSystemoftheUniverse was printed first (London, 1678), abridged by Thomas Wise(London, 1706),reprinted by Thomas Birch (London, 1743), and translated into Latin with an elaborate commentary by J.L.Mosheim(Jena,1733).Thisversionwasstilladmiredinthenineteenth century when it was employed for a further English edition (London, 1845). Cud- worth was Temple's teacheratCambridge and Temple's essaywasdedicatedto his alma mater. The Chevalier Ramsay's work was published first in 1727 in French andEnglishversions, enlargedin1730,andrepublished manytimesthereafter. Anappendix isentitled,"ADiscourse upon theTheologyand Mythologyofthe Ancients." This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsANCIENTSANDMODERNSRECONSIDERED83 commentary, dictionary, index, above all, the footnote, all new and modern intheir time,appeared toimpedethedesire for elegance andforeloquence.Itwasthesamewiththatvastnewworld of material remains, now studiedfor thefirsttimeintheponderous tomes ofRenaissance antiquaries. On theother hand, thevery ad- vances in philological and archeological learning, thereal addition totheunderstanding ofclassicalauthors thatresulted,beganto threaten theconfidencein imitation and in theancient wisdom on which thewhole revival was based. To know Homer or Pythagoras toowellwastoopenagulfthatdividedthemfrommodern life, rather than identifying them with it. It was in the end to make them useless in any immediatepractical fashion. Ofwhat value was the teachingofapoetwhosanghissongsaloudtoagroup oftribal warriorswhose manners and customs seemed closer to the American Indian than the eighteenth-century gentleman? Thus the last crucial ingredient inthebattleofthebooks was prepared through which alone can we appreciate the bitter contest that resulted between the 'wits' and thescholars, rhetoric and philology, 'polite' learning and erudition. Nodoubt this is why, in the later stages of the battle, all attention was centered for a while on a single fierce question about the value and authenticity of one ancient work. It was, of course, the Epistles ofPhalaris,those fraudulent letters ofa lateGreek sophist which pitted philology, in thehands oftheredoubtable Richard Bentley, againstrhetoric, inthehands oftheChristChurch witsandthe whole world ofpolite literature. Here, thequarrel between the an- cientsandthemoderns tookanewturnandforthetimebeing philosophy and sciencewere pretty muchforgotten; here, was the real climax of Swift's satire, as in some ways it was the true climax ofthequarrel.22Yet,even so, thebattle went on, for theissue was not easily resolved and it is sometimes forgotten that the loud clamor thatwasraisedagainstPope'stranslation oftheIliadjustafew years later was really another episode in the selfsame dispute-and anotherinstanceofthecloseconnectionwithFrancewherethe battle over Homer was always accepted as the capstone of the quar- rel. Indeed, The Dunciad and the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus were no mean blows infavor oftheancients, topickoutonlythe mostnotableinanewgeneration. AndtheEpistlesofPhalaris, 22Forbibliography, seeLevine, "Ancients, Moderns and History." This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions84EIGHTEENTH-CENTURYSTUDIES despite the vigorous blows of the moderns, were for a long time still read and valued as genuine.23Thus the historian who would like to view the battle whole had better abandon Swift's premature account altogether, and Jones aswell,and try totrack thecontestthrough the thickets of controversy down through the eighteenth century at leasttothetimeofEdwardGibbon.Butnowhewillfindthat throughout thestruggle itwas theclassicalscholars who were the avowed (and the most dangerous) of the moderns, sometimes allied withtheanti-Ciceronians andthenatural philosophers and some- timesnot,butaddingalwaystothefuryandcomplexityofthe quarrel. WhatIhave been suggesting then isthat any complete account of the battle must begin by considering each of the different strands ofargument forboththeancientsandthemoderns separately as theydeveloped over long stretches oftimebefore trying tothread themtogetherintoawhole.Thequarrel, toembellishtheusual military metaphor, was not so much a battle of the books, as a long series ofskirmishes foughtoutupon anumber ofdifferent battle- fieldsfor different objectives by combatants ofvarying degrees of commitment most ofwhom were satisfiedin theendwith astale- mate.Yet,notwithstanding allthisconfusion, thereappears tobe oneperspectiveanyway from whichitispossibletoseeallthese mixed motives and different episodes as making up a kind of whole. For ifthequarrel was notsimply about scienceor literature, phi- losophy or rhetoric, erudition or imitation, itwas, I believe, always andeverywhere abouthistory, aboutthemeaning anduseofthe past and about themethod ofapprehending it.(This is,ofcourse, an inversion of the usual view that it was a quarrel about the future, whichwasonlypartlytrue.)Herewasoneissuethatinasense underlay alltherest.Andhereitwasthatboththeancientsand themoderns loosedtheirheaviestartillery, thoughheretoothey foughttoastandstill. History was the nub of the contest because wherever one started, whether it was with literature or philosophy, the arts or the sciences, thedisputewasalwaysaboutthepurposes ofthepast,aboutits usefulnessandauthority inthepresent. Theancientsof1700de- fended it, of course, at least that special part of the past which they designated asclassical,asofferingmodelsfor practical lifein the 23ThomasFrancklin, ed.,The EpistlesofPhalaris(London,1749),pp. iii-xvi. This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsANCIENTSANDMODERNSRECONSIDERED85 present. Themoderns hesitated,unsure how far to acceptthat au- thority, persuaded that in some cases they had already matched or excelledtheclassicsand half-convinced that later timesshould be left free to follow their own bent. In this way the comparisons began, the best of Antiquity against thebest of modernity, in what turned out to be a vain attempt to prove the superiority of the one over the other in all fieldsofhuman endeavor. Long before Wotton tried to meetTemple's arguments withacanvass ofthefieldoflearning, in whicheachoftheancientswas paired withamodern, thefeat had been attempted by Tassoni in Italy, by Glanvill in England, by Perrault inFrance,andlesssystematicallybyothersbeforeand since.24The effort proved vain because the fieldhad to be divided. It was soon clear that the ancient superiority in natural science and technologywasindeedunderseriouschallengebythemoderns, though many, including Swiftand Temple, remained recalcitrant; while,ontheotherhand,thefieldofeloquence,thatistosay, rhetoric and poetry, history, oratory, moral philosophy, even the arts and architecture (in effect,the whole studiahumanitatis of Cicero and theRenaissance humanists), remained for both parties stillin thehands oftheancients.25Was Cicero ever so popular or so imi- tatedasineighteenth-centuryEngland,eveninthehandsofso thorough amodernasDavidHume?Iftherewereafewreally radical moderns who stood ready to deny this concession, they were almostexclusivelyFrenchmen andverymuchintheminority. It wasWotton amongotherswhosawthedifferencebetweenthose fields of human endeavor that were truly cumulative and those that were not,thosethatwere capableofimprovement and thosethat appeared tohavealreadyreachedperfection,andtheeighteenth century onthewholefollowed suit.Ifthemoderns remained still criticaloftheabsolute authority oftheancientmodels inthehu- manities,more readythan theancientstoacknowledge thateven Homer could nod upon occasion (a thought that theyborrowed, of course, from Horace!), and ready from time to time to hint at orig- inality as a virtue, they yet continued to accept the classical authors 24AlessandroTassoni,Diecilibridipensieridiversi(Carpi,1620),Book 10; JosephGlanvill,PlusUltra:ortheProgressandAdvancementofKnowledge (London,1668); Charles Perrault, Paralleledesanciens etdesmodernes, 4vols. (Paris,1688-96). 25Wottonwas willing to concede all these except architecture where he remained equivocal, quoting Perrault atlength but indecisively; see Reflections,pp. 63-68. This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions86EIGHTEENTH-CENTURYSTUDIES and artists astheultimatestandards in lifeand art. Themoderns thought thattheclassicsmightberivaled as wellasimitatedon occasion even surpassedbut only by doing the very same kind of thing. They sought no new ground for the humanities because (like their rivals) theycouldnot conceivenew ground possible. Andso they sacrificed Shakespeare and Dante, among many others, despite some nagging doubts. In their acceptance of the alternative notions ofimitation or emulation, theancients and themoderns were both committing themselves to the same Renaissance view ofhistory, to theideathatthewholeofthehuman pastcouldbedividedinto three large periods, Antiquity, the Dark or Middle Ages,and Mod- ernTimes.TheyacceptedthattherevivalofAntiquitywasthe beginning oftheir own time,only disputing about theinvention of modern philosophy inthedissemination oflight.Asalways, there was muchagreement beneath thenoise ofbattle. Butifpairing ofauthors andperiodization ofthepastallowed for acertain measure ofagreement about themeaning ofhistory, disagreement was more profound about the method of history. Per- hapsonnoothercontestedground wastheresorealadisparity between the two sides. Each argued for a way of reconstructing the pastthatwas not onlydifferentbutintheendantitheticaltothe other. So the ancients, true to their general purposes, proposed that allhistorymustbenarrative, composedafterthefashionofthe classicalmodels,especially(thoughnotexclusively)aftertheRo- mans, Livy and Tacitus, who furnished alternative models ofstyle. Ahistory, therefore, mustbeapieceofrhetoric governed bythe precepts ofCicero or Lucian, shapely in its artistic prose, eloquent initsset-piecedescriptions andspeeches,teachingmoralityand politicsbyexample.Inthiswaytheancientworks wereactually taught in school as literature, read at the university, translated into English, and imitatedin practice. And on thispoint, typically, the moderns were willing to concede a great deal, indeed almost every- thing except the idea that they were doomed to failure in the attempt tobeattheancients attheir own game.26 Where theargument really erupted was when themoderns pro- posed an alternative kind ofhistory, not necessarily better but en- tirely distinct, almost without precedent and decidedly new. It was when Wotton proposed that philology and antiquities were of them- 26Levine,"Ancients, Moderns and History," 54-75. This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsANCIENTSANDMODERNSRECONSIDERED87 selves a kind ofhistory, a way ofpenetrating into thewhole lifeof thepastandrecovering thingsotherwiseunknown, atopicaland analytical alternative to narrative, that Temple and his friends were most incredulous. But Wotton was really claiming this kind ofhis- toryforscience,notforliterature. Perhaps heexaggeratedwhen hearguedthatthecorrections andannotations ofmodern schol- arshiphadrequired more"fineness ofthoughtandhappiness of invention" than theoriginals themselvesand thatamodern could know moreabouttheancientworld thanevenacontemporary.27 But Temple and the wits objected to the very idea that philological and antiquarian activitiesproduced any kind ofreal knowledge, or thatthetopicalaccumulation ofdetailintheponderous and very unrhetorical tomes of the scholars could possibly be useful.28It was no help to suggestthat the narratives of the ancients could thus be examined and even corrected in the light of a superior knowledge- that was the very danger that the new erudition seemed to pose for theauthority andperfectionoftheclassics.Norcouldoneargue that antiquarian lore was useful to the men of the world who needed thepractical wisdom ofthestatesman, that is,history teaching by example. Scholarship like sciencemight have to justifyitselfby its fruits but itwas not entirely obvious in1700 justwhat those fruits mightbeapart from thedestruction ofcherished beliefs. Here,then,wasanargumentthatwasnotresolved.Thewits poured down their satire on the scholars in works that we still read with amusement; the scholars replied with weighty volumes that lie dusty on our shelves. To that extent the ancients proved themselves right. On the other hand, their satire covered over a real uneasiness and in their own way thescholars could claim an ironic last laugh. Fortheaccumulationofknowledgewhichhadcarriedthemfar indeedbeyondtheearlyhumanistsandprovedindisputablythe progressivecharacterofthemodernhistoricaldisciplineatlast helped to bring down the whole artful edifice in which they like the ancients believed.In theend, we know thattheclassicswere ban- ishedfromthecurriculum, andwiththemtheancientnarratives and theteachingofpractical wisdom byexampleand theideaof a prisca theologiaalthough it took a very long time to accomplish. Ifeventually thefootnote cametoreign, and wenow know vastly 27Reflections, p.318. 28Temple,"Some Thoughts," note7above, p.259. This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions88EIGHTEENTH-CENTURYSTUDIES more about the ancients (even, perhaps, about the ancients and the moderns!) than anyonebefore, itis, justasWotton supposed, be- causethemoderns were also right, right thatisabout themethod ofhistory, and destined toashare in thevictory. Ifthebattle ofthebooks began in1690 with Temple's essay, as a resumption of hostilities that were centuries old, it was, therefore, theargument between literature and learning thatalonecouldbe said to be new. Allthe other ideas had long been debated and even thetensionbetweenpolishanderudition hadbeenlongbrewing. Butnowforthefirsttimeitwasthoroughly airedandself-con- sciously argued. Ifwe need an end to our quarrel then,weshould perhaps look for it in those later skirmishes of Pope with the schol- ars, withBentleyagainand hiscurious edition ofMilton,or with Theobald and his Shakespeare, though there is a strong temptation to pursue iteven later into themidcentury debateabout imitation and originality, or perhaps still later to the 'Gothic revival' and the growing tastefor thenonclassical centuries ofEuropean history.29 There is,ofcourse, asensein whichthesamearguments are still alive in thepages oftheTimes Literary Supplement.But ifthere is one satisfactory conclusion to the quarrel, a true moment of cul- minationinthegrowingself-consciousnessaboutallthesemany issues, it was perhaps that instant when Edward Gibbon conceived his lifework. Ifhistory is the key to the quarrel, then Gibbon is the historian who best unlocks it. He was not the first to try to compose the difficultiesthat still divided the world of his time into ancients and moderns but he was the closest of anyone to succeed.From his youth he was preoccupied with the problem.30The Decline and Fall ofthe RomanEmpire istheclimacticwork ofeighteenth-century historiography,perhaps of the whole historiography of Western cul- ture toitstime.Itattempteddeliberately tocombineallthebest in the achievement ofboth the ancients and the moderns, classical rhetoric and the new philology, ancient narrative and modern schol- 29Among manyexplicitdiscussionsintheperiodicals,seeforexample,The Adventurer, 49(1753),127,133(1754);The RoyalMagazine,9(1763);James Boswell, "On Past and Present," Hypochondriack (1782),ed. Marjory Bailey (Palo Alto, Calif.; Stanford University Press, 1928), pp. 141-49; Memoirs of the Literary and PhilosophicalSocietyofManchester,I(1785).SeealsoW.J.Lorimer, "A NeglectedAspect of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes,"Modern Language Review,51(1956),179-85;A.OwenAldrich,"AncientsandModernsinthe EighteenthCentury," DictionaryoftheHistoryofIdeas(NewYork: Scribner, 1968),I,76-87. 30See his Essaisurl'etude delalitterature(Paris,1761). This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsANCIENTSANDMODERNSRECONSIDERED89 arship, and ifitfailedtosynthesizethemcompletely, asseemsto havehappened,thenthatfailurewasitselffatefultothefuture courseofhistoricalwriting.3"AfterGibbon,andtosomeextent becauseofGibbon,althoughthequarrel carriedon,theterrain changednotably. Weareatlastonthevergeofatrulymodern sensibility, one, that isto say, contemporary with our own but per- haps only fully intelligible if we can understand the soil from which itsprang. Hereperhaps isthebestexcusefor areconsideration of thatnoisy quarrel, thattempestin ateapotthatSwiftlabeledfor alltimethebattleofthebooks, andthatwentonforgeneration after generation to trouble the European mind and to raise so many unexpectedissuesaboutbothpastandfuture,someofwhichat leastremain totrouble ustoday. SyracuseUniversity 3'See, for example, the review at Gottingen in the Gottingische gelehrte Anzeigen (1788),claiming superiority for German source criticism, citedby Arnaldo Mom- iglianoin"Gibbon's Contribution toHistoricalMethod," StudiesinHistoriog- raphy (NewYork: Harper and Row,1966),p. 40; and Herbert Butterfield, "The Rise of the German Historical School," Man on HisPast(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.Press,1955),pp.51-61.For agoodstatementofthenewhistoriography, seeHelmutD.Schmidt,"Schlozer onHistoriography," HistoryandTheory,18 (1979),37-51.Itshouldberemembered thatGibbon wrotehishistory entirely from his own library. This content downloaded from 201.212.200.141 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:25 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions