And this is what we undertook to narrate in the present chapter.
CHAPTER IX
HOW, ALTHOUGH WE PREFERRED THE WORKS OF THE ANCIENTS, WE HAVE NOT
CONDEMNED THE STUDIES OF THE MODERNS
Although the novelties of the moderns were never disagreeable to
our desires, who have always cherished with grateful affection
those who devote themselves to study and who add anything either
ingenious or useful to the opinions of our forefathers, yet we
have always desired with more undoubting avidity to investigate
the well-tested labours of the ancients. For whether they had by
nature a greater vigour of mental sagacity, or whether they
perhaps indulged in closer application to study, or whether they
were assisted in their progress by both these things, one thing
we are perfectly clear about, that their successors are barely
capable of discussing the discoveries of their forerunners, and
of acquiring those things as pupils which the ancients dug out by
difficult efforts of discovery. For as we read that the men of
old were of a more excellent degree of bodily development than
modern times are found to produce, it is by no means absurd to
suppose that most of the ancients were distinguished by brighter
faculties, seeing that in the labours they accomplished of both
kinds they are inimitable by posterity. And so Phocas writes in
the prologue to his Grammar:
Since all things have been said by men of sense
The only novelty is--to condense.
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