pains with my poetry, but nobody will be persuaded to take the same with his. If I had taken to the Church (as he affirms, but which was never in my thoughts), I should have had more sense, if not more grace, than to have turned myself out of my benefice by writing libels on my parishioners. But 5 his account of my manners and my principles are of a piece with his cavils and his poetry; and so I have done with him forever.

As for the City Bard, or Knight Physician, I hear his quarrel to me is that I was the author of Absalom and Achit- 10 ophel, which he thinks is a little hard on his fanatic patrons in London. But I will deal the more civilly with his two poems because nothing ill is to be spoken of the dead, and therefore peace be to the manes of his Arthurs. I will only say that it was not for this noble knight that I drew the plan 15 of an epic poem on King Arthur, in my preface to the translation of Juvenal. The guardian angels of kingdoms were machines too ponderous for him to manage; and therefore he rejected them, as Dares did the whirl-bats of Eryx when they were thrown before him by Entellus. Yet from that preface 20 he plainly took his hint; for he began immediately upon the story, though he had the baseness not to acknowledge his benefactor but instead of it to traduce me in a libel.

I shall say the less of Mr. Collier because in many things he has taxed me justly, and I have pleaded guilty to all 25 thoughts and expressions of mine which can we truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance. It becomes me not to draw 30 my pen in the defence of a bad cause when I have so often drawn it for a good one. Yet it were not difficult to prove that in many places he has perverted my meaning by his glosses, and interpreted my words into blasphemy and bawdry of which they were not guilty-besides that he is too much 35 given to horse-play in his raillery, and comes to battle like a dictator from the plough. I will not say the zeal of God's house has eaten him up, but I am sure it has devoured some

part of his good manners and civility.

. . But I am not

to prejudice the cause of my fellow poets, though I abandon my own defence; they have some of them answered for themselves, and neither they nor I can think Mr. Collier so for5 midable an enemy that we should shun him. He has lost ground at the latter end of the day by pursuing his point too far, like the Prince of Condé at the battle of Senneffe: from immoral plays to no plays, “ab abuso ad usum not valet consequentia." But, being a party, I am not to erect myself 10 into a judge. As for the rest of those who have written against me, they are such scoundrels that they deserve not the least notice to be taken of them. Blackmore and Milbourn are only distinguished from the crowd by being remembered to their infamy.

15

"Demetri, teque Tigelli, Discipularum inter jubeo plorare cathedras.”

Jonathan Swift.

1667-1745.

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS.

(1704.)

Whoever examines, with due circumspection, into the Annual Records of Time, will find it remarked that War is the child of Pride, and Pride the daughter of Riches:-the former of which assertions may be soon granted, but one cannot so easily subscribe to the latter; for Pride is nearly related 5 to Beggary and Want, either by father or mother, and sometimes by both and to speak naturally, it very seldom happens among men to fall out when all have enough, invasions usually travelling from north to south, that is to say, from poverty upon plenty. The most ancient and natural grounds 10 of quarrels are Lust and Avarice; which, though we may allow to be brethren or collateral branches of Pride, are certainly the issues of Want. For, to speak in the phrase of writers upon the politics, we may observe in the Republic of Dogs (which, in its original, seems to be an institution of 15 the many) that the whole state is ever in the profoundest peace after a full meal; and that civil broils arise among them when it happens for one great bone to be seized on by some leading dog, who either divides it among the few, and then it falls to an oligarchy, or keeps it to himself, and then it 20 runs up to a tyranny. Again, if we look upon any of these republics engaged in a foreign war, either of invasion or defence, we shall find the same reasoning will serve as to the grounds and occasions of each, and that poverty or want, in some degree or other (whether real or in opinion, which 25 makes no alteration in the case), hath a great share, as well as pride, on the part of the aggressor.

Now, whoever will please to take this scheme, and either

reduce or adapt it to an intellectual state, or commonwealth of learning, will soon discover the first ground of disagreement between the two great parties at this time in arms, and may form just conclusions upon the merits of either cause. 5 But the issue or events of this war are not so easy to conjecture at; for the present quarrel is so inflamed by the warm heads of either faction, and the pretensions somewhere or other so exorbitant, as not to admit the least overtures of accommodation. This quarrel first began, as I have heard it 10 affirmed by an old dweller in the neighborhood, about a small spot of ground, lying and being upon one of the two tops of the hill Parnassus; the highest and largest of which had, it seems, been time out of mind in quiet possession of certain tenants, called the Ancients, and the other was held by the 15 Moderns. But these, disliking their present station, sent certain ambassadors to the Ancients, complaining of a great nuisance, how the height of that part of Parnassus quite spoiled the prospect of theirs, especially towards the east; and therefore, to avoid a war, offered them the choice of this 20 alternative either that the Ancients would please to remove themselves and their effects down to the lower summity, which the Moderns would graciously surrender to them, and advance in their place; or else the said Ancients will give leave to the Moderns to come with shovels and mattocks, and level the 25 said hill as low as they shall think it convenient. To which the Ancients made answer how little they expected such a message as this from a colony whom they had admitted, out of their own free grace, to so near a neighborhood; that, as to their own seat, they were aborigines of it, and therefore to 30 talk with them of a removal or surrender was a language they did not understand; that if the height of the hill on their side shortened the prospect of the Moderns, it was a disadvantage they could not help, but desired them to consider whether that injury (if it be any) were not largely recompensed by 35 the shade and shelter it afforded them; that, as to the levelling or digging down, it was either folly or ignorance to propose it, if they did or did not know how that side of the hill was an entire rock, which would break their tools and hearts,

without any damage to itself; that they would therefore advise the Moderns rather to raise their own side of the hill than dream of pulling down that of the Ancients, to the former of which they would not only give license but also largely contribute. All this was rejected by the Moderns with much 5 indignation, who still insisted upon one of the two expedients; and so this difference broke out into a long and obstinate war, maintained on the one part by resolution, and by the courage of certain leaders and allies; but, on the other, by the greatness of their number, upon all defeats affording 10 continual recruits. In this quarrel whole rivulets of ink have been exhausted, and the virulence of both parties enormously augmented. Now, it must here be understood that ink is the great missive weapon in all battles of the learned, which, conveyed through a sort of engine called a quill, infinite num- 15 bers of these are darted at the enemy by the valiant on each side, with equal skill and violence, as if it were an engagement of porcupines. This malignant liquor was compounded, by the engineer who invented it, of two ingredients, which are gall and copperas; by its bitterness and venom to suit, in 20 some degree, as well as to foment, the genius of the combatants. And as the Grecians, after an engagement, when they could not agree about the victory, were wont to set up trophies on both sides, the beaten party being content to be at the same expense, to keep itself in countenance (a laudable 25 and ancient custom, happily revived of late, in the art of war), so the learned, after a sharp and bloody dispute, do, on both sides, hang out their trophies too, whichever comes by the worst. These trophies have largely inscribed on them the merits of the cause, a full impartial account of such a 30 battle, and how the victory fell clearly to the party that set them up. They are known to the world under several names; as disputes, arguments, rejoinders, brief considerations, answers, replies, remarks, reflections, objections, confutations. For a very few days they are fixed up in all public places, 35 either by themselves or their representatives, for passengers to gaze at; whence the chiefest and largest are removed to certain magazines they call libraries, there to remain in a