=2. His Poetry.= Swift would have been among the first to smile at any claim being advanced for him on the score of his being a great poet, yet in bulk his verse is considerable, and in quality it is striking. His poems were to a large extent recreations: odd verses (sometimes humorously doggerel) to his friends; squibs and lampoons on his political and private enemies, including the famous one on Partridge, the quack astrologer; and one longish one, _Cadenus and Vanessa_ (1730), which deals with his fancy for Esther Vanhomrigh. In his poems he is as a rule lighter of touch and more placable in humor than he is in his prose. His favorite meter is the octosyllabic couplet, which he handles with a dexterity that reminds the reader of Butler in _Hudibras_. He has lapses of taste, when be becomes coarse and vindictive; and sometimes the verse, through mere indifference, is badly strung and colloquially expressed. The following is from some bitter verses he wrote (1735) on his own death just before the final night of madness descended. Note the fierce misery inadequately screened with savage scorn. Yet thus, methinks, I hear them speak: “See, how the Dean begins to break! Poor gentleman, he droops apace! You’ll plainly find it in his face. That old vertigo in his head Will never leave him, till he’s dead. Besides, his memory decays: He recollects not what he says; He cannot call his friends to mind; Forgets the place where last he dined; Plies you with stories o’er and o’er; He told them fifty times before. How does he fancy we can sit To hear his out-of-fashion wit? But he takes up with younger folks, Who for his wine will bear his jokes. Faith, he must make his stories shorter, Or change his comrades once a quarter: In half the time he talks them round, There must another set be found.” =3. His Prose.= Almost in one bound Swift attained to a mastery of English prose, and then maintained an astonishing level of excellence. His first noteworthy book was _The Battle of the Books_, published in 1704. The theme of this work is a well-worn one, being the dispute between ancient and modern authors. At the time Swift wrote it his patron, Sir William Temple, was engaged in the controversy, and Swift’s tract was in support of his kinsman’s views. Swift gives the theme a half allegorical, mock-heroic setting, in which the books in a library at length literally contend with one another. The handling is vigorous and illuminating, and refreshed with many happy remarks and allusions. The famous passage where a bee, accidentally blundering into a spider’s web, argues down the bitter remarks of the spider, is one of Swift’s happiest efforts.