Quarrel of The Ancients and The Moderns - Analogous British Debate

Analogous British Debate

In contemporary Britain, the quarrel was taken less seriously. Sir William Temple argued against the Modern position in his essay On Ancient and Modern Learning; therein he repeated the commonplace, originally from Bernard of Chartres, that we see more only because we are dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants. Temple's essay prompted a small flurry of responses. Among others, two men who took the side opposing Temple were classicist and editor Richard Bentley and critic William Wotton.

The entire discussion in England was over by 1696, but it was revisited by Jonathan Swift, who saw in the opposing camps of Ancients and Moderns a shorthand of two general ways of looking at the world. He developed this in his satire A Tale of a Tub, composed between 1694 and 1697 and published in 1704 with the famous prolegomenon The Battle of the Books, long after the initial salvoes were over in France. Swift's polarizing satire provided a framework for other satirists in his circle of the Scriblerians.