702 RENAISSANCES

While Perrault1 anticipated Fontenelle and Wotton in conceding that
the general superiority which the champions of the Moderns' cause
claimed for 'the Moderns' over 'the Ancients' might not be demonstrable
in the provinces of Poetry and Eloquence, he made this concession
expressly 'for the sake of peace'2 and perceptibly against the grain; for
Perrault himself was a poet; and, though his poetry was doomed to be
judged inferior by all standards, whether 'Modern' or 'Ancient', he was
vain enough to fancy that he had a personal stake in the question of the
relative merits of 'the Moderns' and 'the Ancients' in the field of his
own art. His advocacy of the Moderns' cause in the domain of the Fine
Arts was therefore not altogether disinterested, and his argument, in-
genious though it might be,3 was eventually exploded by one of the
twentieth-century Western scientific achievements of a progress which,
in the field of Science, was to vindicate Perrault's championship of the
Moderns in the act of confuting the seventeenth-century Western poet
on the particular issue which he had most at heart.

Perrault's argument ran as follows:

Tourquoy, voules-vous . . . que PEloquence et la Poesie n'ayent pas
eu besoin d'autant de siecles pour se perfectionner que la Physique et
rAstronomie? Le coeur de Thomme qu'il faut connoistre pour le per-
suader et pour luy plaire, est il plus aise a penetrer que les secrets de la
Nature, et n'a-t-il pas de tout temps este" regarde comme le plus creux de
tous les abismes, ou Ton decouvre tous les jours quelque chose de nouveau,
et dont il n'y a que Dieu seul qui puisse sender toute la profondeur? . ..
Je pourrois vous faire voir ce que j'avance en examinant toutes les pas-
sions Tune apres 1'autre, et vous convaincre qu'il y a mille sentimens
delicats sur chacune d'elles dans les ouvrages de nos auteurs, dans leurs
traitez de morale, dans leurs tragedies, dans leurs romans, et dans leurs
pieces d'eloquence, qui ne se rencontrent point chez les Anciens. Dans
les seules tragedies de Corneille il y a plus de pens<§es fines et delicates sur
I'ambition, sur la vengeance, sur la jalousie, qu'il n'y en a dans tous des
livres de I'antiquite.'4

These were Perrault's grounds for his contention that there might be
a possibility of cumulative achievement in Poetry as well as in Mathe-
matics; and, if there had been any cogency in the minor Modern
Western poet's case, his suit would have been won for him by the
posthumous support that he received from one of the immortals. In
reflecting on the sources of his own inspiration, Shelley once observed5
that he had found 'common sources of those elements which it is the
province of the poet to embody and combine' in 'the beautiful and
majestic scenery of the Earth' and in 'the poetry of Ancient Greece and

1 Perrault, Ch.: ParalelU des Andens et des Modernes en ce qui Regarde les Arts et les
Sciences (Paris 1688-96, Coignard, 4 Parts).

* *Nous conclurons, si vous 1'avez agreable, que dans tous les arts et dans toutes les
sciences, a la reserve de 1'Eloquence et de la Poe'sie, les Modernes sont de beaucoup
superieurs aux Anciens, comme je croy 1'avoir prouve suffisamment, et qu'£ I'e'gard de
rEloquence et de la Poesie, quoy qu'il n'y ait aucune raison d'en juger autrement, il
faut pour le bien de la paix ne rien decider stir cet article' (Perrault, op. cit., Part iv,
Cinqui£me et Dernier Dialogue, pp. 293-3).

J A summary of it will be found in Bury, The Idea of Progress, pp. 86-87,

* Perrault, op. cit., Part ii, Troisierne Dialogue, pp. 39-31. Cp. p. 394 and Part iii,
Quatrierne Dialogue, pp. 23, 155, and 279.

* In bis Introduction to The Revolt of Islam, composed in AJD. 1817.