Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/43

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INTRODUCTION
xxxv

Temple's Miscellanea containing among other papers, that defence of his Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning which Temple had begun but never completed: and in 1704 Swift published the volume containing the Tale of a Tub, and the Battle of the Books. Of these it remains to speak.

Swift and Temple

Born in 1667, at a house in Hoey's Court, Dublin, Jonathan Swift was the child of English parents. His father died some months before the birth of this his only son (a daughter had been born some time before); and Swift was educated at Kilkenny Grammar School, and Trinity College, Dublin, at the expense chiefly of one of his uncles, Godwin Swift. He remained some time at Trinity College after taking a not very honourable degree, and then went to live with his mother at Leicester. Towards the end of the year 1689 he became a sort of amanuensis to Sir William Temple, whose wife, Dorothy Osborne, the writer of delightful letters, was distantly related to Swift's mother. He lived with Sir William first at