Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/56

xlviii (f) The Notes (1704 and 1710)

In the first, second, third, and fourth editions of the Battle of the Books there appeared the footnotes printed with the body of the text in the present edition. In the fifth and subsequent editions some other notes were added: these are printed, in this edition, among the notes at the end of the volume, with the indication that they are from the fifth edition.

The question who wrote this second set of notes is very interesting, but probably is now insoluble. The title-page to the whole volume of the fifth edition bears the words 'The Fifth Edition: With the Author's Apology and Explanatory Notes. By W. W-tt-n, B.D., and others.' At the end of the Apology Swift says, 'The Author is informed, that the Bookseller has prevailed on several Gentlemen, to write some Explanatory Notes, for the goodness of which he is not to answer, having never seen any of them, nor intends it, till they appear in Print, when it is not unlikely he may have the pleasure to find twenty meanings, which never entered into his Imagination.'

Wotton's notes only concern the Tale of a Tub and