Appendix B - William Wotton, ‘Observations upon the Tale of a Tub’

Summary

I have now given a full Answer, as I think, Sir, to all the Argumentative part of Sir W. Temple's Thoughts upon the Reflexions. If we do not allow that he misunderstood the Question as I had plainly stated it,^(t) we must believe that he wilfully mistook it; and the rather, because when he was to examine the several Particulars in which I apprehended that the Preference was to be given to the Moderns, he drops the Question. It is done decently indeed, and there is a Hiatus in Manuscripto, as the Publisher of the Tale of a Tub expresses it^,(u) that so we may suppose the Comparison was intended to be made, and only by accident left imperfect. For after Sir William Temple had said, “Since the Modern Advocates yield, though very unwillingly, the Pre-eminence of the Ancients in Poetry, Oratory, Painting, Statuary and Architecture; I shall proceed to examine the Account they give of those Sciences, wherein they affirm the Moderns to excel the Ancients; whereof they make the chief to be the Invention of Instruments; Chymistry; Anatomy; Natural History of Minerals, Plants, and Animals; Astronomy andOptics; Music; Physick; Natural Philosophy; Philology and Theology; of all which I shall take a short survey.” There is a Gap, and Dr. Swift fills it up thus, Here it is supposed, the Knowledge of the Ancients and Moderns last mentioned, was to have been compared: But whether the Author designed to have gone through such a Work himself, or intended these Papers only for Hints to some body else that desired them, is not known. After which, the rest was to follow written in his own Hand as before.^(w) This Method of answering of Books, and of publishing such Answers, is very dissatisfactory. Just where the Pinch of the Question lay, there the Copy fails, and where there was more Room for flourishing, there Sir W. Temple was as copious as one would wish. To use his own Words, This is very wonderful, if it be not a Jest; and I take it for granted, Dr. Swift had express Orders to print these Fragments of an Answer.