[Cooke (Thomas)] The Battle of the Poets. An Heroick Poem, first edition, some light scattered spotting and browning, disbound, folio, J.Roberts, 1725.
⁂ First edition of Cooke's most famous work, rare, ESTC lists on 2 copies in the UK (both BL) and 6 in the US. Cooke's poem continued the British Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns which Swift had taken up in The Battle of the Books. Unlike in Swift's poem however Cooke had Pope and other Tory writers defeated by their modern counterparts. Cooke would later go on to criticise Pope's translation of the Iliad, these two attacks ultimately led to Pope including Cooke as one of the dunces in his Dunciad.
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