eminent _French_ Authors have written since, who were not of the _Academy_, as St. _Evremont_, _Menage_, _&c._ But there's something pleasant in the Complements that are paid to it, and the _Antiquaries_ have found out just such another Society in _Rome_, under the Patronage of _Augustus_, to refine the _Roman_ Language, which, by the way, had been refined before by _Terence_, _Lucretius_, _Cicero_, _Hortensius_, and their Contemporaries, at the latter End of the Republick. The Learned Antiquaries go so far as to name the _Roman Academicians_, _Mecænas_, _Pollio_, _Plotius_, _Valgius_, The Two _Messala's_, The Two _Bibulus's_, _Piso_, the Father, _Servius_, _Fulvius_, _Tibullus_, _Horace_. _Ovid_ perhaps was left out because he was in Exile at _Tomos_; but why could they not have put in _Livy_, _Propertius_, &c. They have given this Academy, the Temple and Library of _Apollo_, to meet and study in, and it is pretended, that _Horace_'s Epistle to the _Piso's_ was written by Direction of the Academy, and if there had ever been such an Academy at all, one might the sooner have given Credit to it. The _French_ Academy set an Example to other learned and ingenious Men, to make themselves Masters of their own Language, and the Encouragement they met with from _Lewis_ XIV produced an Age of Poets, Orators, and Criticks. The latter have done more towards explaining the _Classicks_ than had been done before from the _Augustan_ Age to their own. They threw Pedantry and Jargon out of their Writings, and render'd them as polite as judicious. Such are the Criticisms of _Rapin_, _Bossu_, _Segrais_, _Boileau_, _Bouhours_, and _Dacier_, who are all read with like Profit and Pleasure; and this is the Reason of the frequent Use of them, and not an Affectation of foreign Phrases, and technical Cant, as is insinuated by such as never read, or never understood them, and by such too as have not only both read and understood them, but have learnt of them all the Reading they have, and yet make use of no other Names than _Quintillian_, _Longinus_, _Donatus_, _Eustathius_, and the Ancients. This is very common, and I could easily prove it upon those who have charg'd others with Ignorance and Illiterature. The Reading _French_ Authors is inconceivably beneficial to such as do not understand _Latin_ so well as Mr. _Dryden_, and _Greek_ so well as Mr. _Pope_: They will learn as much of the _Greek_ History from _Ablancourt_'s _Thucydides_, and of the _Latin_ from _Du Ryer_'s _Livy_, as they could from the Originals. And as to the Poets, they had better read Madam _Dacier_'s _Homer_, and _Segrais_'s _Virgil_, which they do understand, than the Original _Homer_ and _Virgil_ which they do not. My Lord _Roscommon_ owns of the _French_, _The choicest Books that_ Rome _or_ Greece _have known, Their excellent Translators made their own._