Evidently the process is endless (il est evident que tout cela n'a point de fin), and the latest men of science must be the most competent.
But this does not apply to poetry or eloquence, round which the controversy has most violently raged.

For poetry and eloquence do not depend on correct reasoning.

They depend principally on vivacity of imagination, and "vivacity of imagination does not require a long course of experiments, or a great multitude of rules, to attain all the perfection of which it is capable." Such perfection might be attained in a few centuries.

If the ancients did achieve perfection in imaginative literature, it follows that they cannot be surpassed; but we have no right to say, as their admirers are fond of pretending, that they cannot be equalled.
5.
Besides the mere nature of time, we have to take into account external circumstances in considering this question.
If the forces of nature are permanent, how are we to explain the fact that in the barbarous centuries after the decline of Rome--the term Middle Ages has not yet come into currency--ignorance was so dense and deep?
This breach of continuity is one of the plausible arguments of the advocates of the Ancients.

Those ages, they say, were ignorant and barbarous because the Greek and Latin writers had ceased to be read; as soon as the study of the classical models revived there was a renaissance of reason and good taste.