Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/58

 Some interest attaches to Wotton's conjectures at the authorship of the Tale of a Tub. In one place he says that 'a brother [he means 'cousin'J of Dr Swift's is publicly reported to have been the editor at least, if not the author [of the Tale of a Tub]': in another he says that Mr Swift [i.e. Thomas Swift] is under great obligations to clear himself from the imputation of having written the book. 'The world besides (he continues) will think it odd that a man should in a dedication play upon that great man, to whom he is more obliged than to any other man now living; for it was at Sir William Temple's request, that my Lord Somers, then Lord-Keeper of the Great-Seal of England, gave Mr Swift a very good benefice in one of the most delicious parts of one of the pleasantest counties of England. It is publicly reported that he wrote this book: it is a story which I neither made, nor spread; for it has been long as public as it can well be. The injury done to religion, that any of its ministers should lie under