--In the same year, 1704, he also published _The
Battle of the Books_, the idea of which was taken from a French work of
Courtraye, entitled "_Histoire de la guerre nouvellement declaree entre
les Anciens et les Modernes_." Swift's work was written in furtherance of
the views of his patron, Temple, who had some time before engaged in the
controversy as to the relative merits of ancient and modern learning, and
who, in the words of Macaulay, "was so absurd as to set up his own
authority against that of Bentley on questions of Greek history and
philology."
_The Battle of the Books_ is of present value, as it affords information
upon the opinions then held on a question which, in various forms, has
been agitating the literary world ever since. In it Swift compares Dryden,
Wotten, and Bentley with the old authors in St. James's Library, where the
battle of the books is said to have taken place.
Upon the death of Sir William Temple, in 1699, Swift had gone to London.
He was ambitious of power and money, and when he found little chance of
preferment among the Whigs, he became a Tory.
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