The Battle of the Books
At the turn of the eighteenth century, intellectuals throughout England were at each other’s throats. Contentions had been building for decades: the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution had called into question some of the central tenets of Renaissance culture, with heady implications for a quickly modernizing society. As things escalated, pamphlets flew about London, high-minded rhetoric alongside backstabbing and insults, as every literate gentleman, it seemed, had to offer his opinion on these developments. The boisterousness of this period was matched only by its influence on English intellectual history. It was, as Jonathan Swift later called it, the “Battle of the Books.”
The question at the heart of the battle of the books was this: were the Greek and Roman authors of classical antiquity still the best models for learning and living, or had modern thinkers surpassed them? For this reason, the Battle was at the time referred to as a debate between “the Ancients” and “the Moderns.”
Those who supported the Ancients argued that all later work was derivative, a shadow of the intellects that shined before, while those who backed the Moderns thought that the increase of information available allowed modern intellectuals to improve upon their forebears.
The stakes were high. Those for the Ancients and those for the Moderns suggested vastly different educational and political strategies. The learning of future generations and the ways that one could be a citizen hung in the balance. Indeed, those stakes still resonate today. As a society, do we look toward the future and attempt to create something better, or do we yearn for a golden age and lament the failings of the modern world?
The items in this case depict specific “skirmishes” in the Battle of the Books. In these texts, scholars debate how to study the past, cast aspersions on each other, and mock each other’s work. In so doing, they reveal much about how we arrived at many of today’s ideas about politics and history.
Temple, William. The works of Sir William Temple, Bart.,: in two volumes.
Initially published in 1690, Sir William Temple’s “An Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning” heralded the beginning of the Battle of the Books in England. Temple was a well-known and well-respected pastor and diplomat, and this essay was meant to be a casual expression of his thoughts on education, literature, and history. In writing this essay, he did not aim to start a war. He merely thought, as he had been taught in grammar school, that the best writers and thinkers were from classical antiquity—Epicurus, Homer, Plato. “Other Sorts of Writings,” as he calls modern works, “do but travel over Paths that have been beaten by the Ancients… [they] are at best Copies of those Originals.” However, in part thanks to Temple’s public stature, this essay exploded onto England’s intellectual scene, prompting a wide variety of responses—some judicious, some not.
Wotton, William. Reflections upon ancient and modern learning.
After the success of Temple’s Essay, the Royal Society asked William Wotton to pen a response. Wotton was well-known in intellectual circles for his prodigious grasp of ancient languages: he was better versed in ancient literature and philosophy than pretty much all his contemporaries, including Temple. Wotton, a bright young scholar eager to prove himself, might have been expected to be more polarizing than Temple, but Reflections is a remarkably even-handed volume, allowing neither the Ancients nor Moderns undue credit.
After extensive analysis, Wotton concludes that some disciplines go to the Ancients and others to the Moderns. Ancients won in Rhetoric, Poetry, Fine Arts. Moderns took “natural philosophy” (chemistry, physics, mathematics, medicine). Ultimately, Wotton thought it a draw, and that the best way forward was to join “Ancient and Modern Learning together… in those things wherein they severally do excel.” Wotton’s judicious analysis, however, did not end the battle.
Bentley, Richard. A dissertation upon the epistles of Phalaris, Themistocles, Socrates, Euripides, and others, and the Fables of Æsop.
How was one to study the Ancients? Besides whether Ancient or Modern learning was preferable, this question is central to the battle of the books. The question of method led Richard Bentley, though one of the best classical scholars of his time, to side with the Moderns. He thought that an indiscriminate adoration of antiquity could only lead to error. To demonstrate this, he penned an essay on Phalaris, published as an appendix of the second edition of his friend Wotton’s Reflections. The essay is a triumph for the Moderns: therein, Bentley proves that the Epistles of Phalaris (letters the tyrant supposedly wrote circa 560 BCE) were actually forgeries written 700 years later. Rigorous criticism was validated in this case, but the battle was not over. As one scholar wrote to another: “Dr. Bentley is proving Phalaris, Aesop, etc. to be all Spurious poor pieces; how will Sir W. Temple and Mr. Boyle take it?”
Boyle, Charles. Dr. Bentley’s dissertations on the epistles of Phalaris and the fables of Æsop, examin’d.
Bentley’s essay on Phalaris was a cause of extreme ire for the Christ Church wits (men of letters at Oxford). Their honor was at stake: Bentley had mocked many of their works in his study of Phalaris, and so they gathered together to write their counterattack.
Though the response they penned was published under the name Charles Boyle, he actually had little to do with it: Francis Atterbury was the primary mind behind “Boyle against Bentley,” as the response came to be known. Though smart and incisive (the Christ Church wits deserve their name), Atterbury and his fellows depended more on ad hominem attacks against Bentley rather than dissecting his scholarship, which led historian Thomas Macaulay to describe “Boyle against Bentley” as “the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he was profoundly ignorant.”
Homer. The Iliad of Homer, Translated by Mr. Pope.
An English writer, as Alexander Pope observed of himself, could only hope to be read “in one Island, and to be thrown aside at the end of one Age.” Poets like Homer, the Ancients argued, would be read in all places and throughout time because of their unequaled greatness, and part of the project of sharing this poetry with new generations was to translate them. Translations, moreover, were a way for contemporary authors to gain prestige by association with the Ancients. Pope, out of his admiration of Homer and his desire for literary prestige, undertook a translation of The Iliad, which was published between 1715 and 1720.
However, Pope’s grasp of Greek was lacking and many of his contemporaries dismissed or outright mocked the translation. As someone wrote to him in a letter: “You are grown very angry, it seems, at Dr. Bentley of late. Is it because he said (to your Face, I have been told) that your Homer was miserable stuff? That it might be called Homer modernized or something to that effect; but that there were little or no Vestiges at all of the old Grecian? Dr. Bentley said right. Hundreds have said the same behind your Back.”
Virgil. The works of Virgil…
Dryden’s translation of Virgil was a central inspiration for Pope’s Homer. With its red-lettering and full-page plates, Dryden’s translation was a stunning material artifact and Dryden’s defining work as a translator. The work was well known and well liked during the eighteenth century, but its popularity did not stop Jonathan Swift from mocking Dryden’s relationship to Virgil in his essay “The Battle of the Books.” Therein, Swift describes Dryden’s attempt to translate Virgil as putting on his armor; his glittering language, Swift implies, suits Dryden even less than his plain, rusty words, and when asked to fight, Dryden balks:
Dryden, in a long harangue, soothed up the good Ancient; called him father, and, by a large deduction of genealogies, made it plainly appear that they were nearly related. Then he humbly proposed an exchange of armour, as a lasting mark of hospitality between them. Virgil consented… though his was of gold and cost a hundred beeves, the other’s but of rusty iron. However, this glittering armour became the Modern yet worsen than his own. Then they agreed to exchange horses; but, when it came to the trial, Dryden was afraid and utterly unable to mount.
Swift here is using the metaphor of armor to remind readers of the literary prestige Dryden gained by associating himself with Virgil: in other words, though Dryden may have dressed himself in Virgil’s armor (his poetry), much finer than his own, Dryden is unable to take on Virgil’s job as a representation of the glory of the Ancients.
Swift, Jonathan. A tale of a tub. Written for the universal improvement of mankind. To which is added, an account of a battel, between the ancient and modern books in St. Jame’s Library.
Jonathan Swift satirized the discourse on the Ancients vs. the Moderns in his “Battel… Between the Ancient and Modern Books” prefixed to his work A Tale of a Tub. In his telling, because of a librarian’s shelving error, Modern books and Ancient books come alive to fight.
Swift was working for Sir William Temple at the time of publishing, but that does not stop him from pulling punches: multiple famous authors are name-checked and mocked, as with John Dryden’s attempt to fill Virgil’s armor. Swift’s satire is often the way that students today are introduced to the Battle. Swift ends the account ambiguously; the fragments, on which he supposedly found it written, disintegrate before the winner is declared.
