Jonathan Swift - LE CONTE DU TONNEAU - 1757

This work, developed in several parts, offers a biting satire with a subtle humor about the famous quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns. It is built around several texts: in the first volume, The Barrel Tale and the Battle of Books vigorously defend the superiority of the Ancients in the literary and cultural domain.
The title of the work refers to a maritime practice: to cast an empty barrel at a whale (symbolizing great minds) in order to divert it from the boat (representing civil society, politics, and religion). This image illustrates the desire to divert attention from major social and political issues through distractions or fallacious speeches.
The third volume gathers a Treatise on the Dissensions between the Nobles and the People in the Republics of Athens and Rome, as well as two satirical essays: The Art of Crawling in Poetry, attributed to Pope, and The Art of Political Lying, attributed to John Arbuthnot.

The Barrel Tale, containing all that the arts and sciences have most sublime and most mysterious, and also several other very curious pieces translated from English by Van Effen
3 volumes in small octavo (17 x 10 cm) of: (8)ff., XVI, (2)ff., 312pp. & (2)ff., XII, 296pp. & (4)ff. XVI, 280 pp.
Complete with illustrations consisting of 8 etchings by Andreas Reinhardt Jr.: the frontispiece, 6 etchings (volume I) and 1 plate illustrating the Battle between the Ancients and Moderns in the St James Library (volume II).
In The Hague, at Henri Scheurleer - 1757

Full contemporary morocco leather - Smooth spine decorated - Titles and volume marks - Red edges
Some light foxing of no consequence - Interior fresh and clean - Plates in good condition - A fine complete copy of its 3 volumes