Jonathan Swift, the British clergyman, moralist, satirist, poet, and political journalist, was born in Dublin, a few months after his father's death. He was educated at Kilkenny Grammar School and received his MA speciali gratiâ from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1686 and MA from Hart Hall, Oxford, in 1692. Periodically, from 1689 to 1699, he acted as secretary to Sir William Temple at Moore Park, Surrey. Ordained deacon and priest in the established church of Ireland, he was left by Temple's death in 1699 to make a career for himself. As domestic chaplain to the earl of Berkeley, lord justice of Ireland, he returned to Dublin and was granted the DD degree in 1701 by Trinity College.

In 1704 there appeared anonymously (his customary mode of publishing) A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books, brilliant satires upholding the ancients against the moderns; assaulting both Catholic and Puritan...