Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/50

 so that the reader may judge for himself to what extent Hawkesworth's statement is accurate.

In addition to these smaller resemblances, it is worthy of remark that Swift's choice of combatants to represent the Ancients is plainly based upon that made by Temple in his Essay. If one makes a list of the Ancients mentioned in the Battle one is at once struck by the fact that the names of the ancient dramatists and orators are all omitted; neither Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plautus, Terence, Demosthenes, nor Cicero, appears in it. The Battle is, of course, professedly incomplete, and if Swift had been asked why these names were omitted he might have replied that their deeds were recorded in those parts of the MS. which perished 'by the injury of fortune or weather.' But there is another explanation. If one makes a list of the Ancients mentioned by Temple one finds that he, too, omits the names of all the dramatists, and only mentions one orator—Cicero. In other respects Swift's list agrees sufficiently closely with that of Temple to make it seem most probable that Swift's list was based almost entirely on Temple's.