Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/123

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APPENDIX

Sir William Temple
AN ESSAY
UPON THE

ANCIENT AND MODERN LEARNING

[1692]

[Temple's Works ed. 1814: III, pp. 444–446]

——Juvat antiquos accedere fontes.

Whoever converses much among the old books will be something hard to please among the new; yet these must have their part too in the leisure of an idle man, and have many of them their beauties as well as their defaults. Those of story or relations of matter of fact have a value from their substance as much as from their form, and the variety of events is seldom without entertainment or instruction, how indifferently soever the tale is told. Other sorts of writings have little of esteem but what they receive from the wit,

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