Page:Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's life.djvu/39

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had consider'd the thing: indeed he had studyed every thing. We did not enter into any very particular detail about it. but we both agreed in this, that the architecture was not like any designs, or descriptions yet publick. no authors have an adequate notion of antient, & original architecture. Sir Isaac rightly judged, that it was older than any other of the great temples mentioned in history; & was indeed the original model which they followed. he added, that Sesostris in Rehoboams time, took the workmen, from Jerusalem, who built his Egyptian temples, in imitation of it; one in every Nomos. & that from thence the greeks borrow'd thir architecture; as they had a good deal of thir religious rites, thir sculpture, & other arts.

Sir Isaac thought, the Greeks, according to thir usual ingenuity, improv'd architecture into a higher delicacy; as they did sculpture and other arts. I confirmed his sentiments by adding, that I could demonstrate (as I apprehended) that the architecture of Solomons temple was what we now call Doric. then, says he, the greeks advanced it into the Ionic, & the Corinthian, as the Latins into the composite.

this winter I had a severe fitt of the gout, as I