The Works of Jonathan Swift DD Author:Jonathan Swift Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A FULL AND TRUE ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE FOUGHT LAST FRIDAY BETWEEN THE ANCIENT AND THE MODERN BOOKS IN SAINT JAMES'S LIBRARY. t THE BOOKSELLER T... more »O THE READER. The following discourse, as it is unquestionably of the same author, so it seems to have been written about the same time, with the former; I mean the year J£2Z, when the famous dispute was on foot about ancien, and moderrrTea?BtHg! ThecZSiroyersy topic Its rise from an essay of sir William Temple's upon that subject; which was answered I by W.Wotton, B. D., with an appendix by Dr. Bentley, endeavoring / to destroy the credit of JEsop and Phalaris for authors, whom William Temple had, in the essay before Inentioned, highly commended. In that appendix the doctor falls hard upon a new edition of Phalaris, put out by the honorable Qharles Boyle, now eajLcf.Jttr- i rery, to which Mr. Boyle replied at large with great learning and wit; and the doctor vqhrminpusly rejoined. In this dispute the town highly resented to see a person of sir William Temple's character and merits roughly used by the two reverend gentlemen afore- said'T"and without any manner of provocation. At length, there /appearing no end of the quarrel, our author tells us that the BOOKS in St. James's Library, looking upon themselves as parties principally concerned, took up the controversy, and came to a decisive battle; but the manuscript, by the injury of fortune or weather, beinginseveral places imperfect, iye,iirnfleaT-n"wTiich side iry fell. musTwarn the reader to beware of applying to persons what is here meant only of books, in the most literal sense. So, when Virgil is mentioned, we are not to understand the person of a famous poet called by that name; but only certain sheets of paper bound up in leather, containing in print the works...« less