THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS.--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 déclarée 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. It must be said, in explanation of this change, that, although he had called himself a Whig, he had disliked many of their opinions, and had never heartily espoused their cause. Like others already referred to, he watched the political horizon, and was ready for a change when circumstances should warrant it. This change and its causes are set forth in his _Bickerstaff's Ridicule of Astrology_ and _Sacramental Test_. The Whigs tried hard to retain him; the Tories were rejoiced to receive him, and modes of preferment for him were openly canvassed. One of these was to make him Bishop of Virginia, with metropolitan powers in America; but it failed. He was also recommended for the See of Hereford; but persons near the queen advised her "to be sure that the man she was going to make a bishop was a Christian." Thus far he had only been made rector of Agher and vicar of Laracor and Rathbeggin. VARIOUS PAMPHLETS.--His _Argument Against the Abolition of Christianity_, Dr. Johnson calls "a very happy and judicious irony." In 1710 he wrote a paper, at the request of the Irish primate, petitioning the queen to remit the first-fruits and twentieth parts to the Irish clergy. In 1712, ten days before the meeting of parliament, he published his _Conduct of the Allies_, which, exposing the greed of Marlborough, persuaded the nation to make peace. A supplement to this is found in _Reflections on the Barrier Treaty_, in which he shows how little English interests had been consulted in that negotiation. His pamphlet on _The Public Spirit of the Whigs_, in answer to Steele's _Crisis_, was so terrible a bomb-shell thrown into the camp of his former friends, and so insulting to the Scotch, that £300 were offered by the queen, at the instance of the Scotch lords, for the discovery of the author; but without success.