The Battle of the Books

Jonathan Swift

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it. But if it should happen otherwise, the danger is not great; and I have learned from long experience never to apprehend mischief from those understandings I have been able to provoke; for anger and fury, though they add strength to the sinews of the body, yet are found to relax those of the mind, and to render all its efforts feeble and impotent.

Swift deserves credit alone for the title piece of this work: “A Full and True Account of the Battle fought last Friday Between the Ancient and the Modern Books in St. James Library.” The little bit about being fought last Friday is wonderful, especially since Swift faithfully preserves a epic style in his narration reminiscent of Homer and Virgil. Not only does he mercilessly rake those people he considers his ideological enemies over the coals, but he also quite a few telling points in man’s continual struggle with a belief in progress and evidence to the contrary.

The Battle of the Books is the closest thing I have yet read to a fair and unbiased conversation about ancient and modern thought—and by fair and unbiased I do of course mean blatantly on the side of the Ancients. He paints his contemporaries and those whom he sees as trying to place themselves above those titans of ancient thought as utter buffoons lacking manners, intelligence, beauty, and common sense. Overall a very damning approach to them and theirs. 6/10