SWIFT, Jonathan. A Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions between the Nobles and Commons in Athens and Rome, with the consequences they had upon both those states.

London: John Nutt, 1701. First edition, second (corrected) impression. Quarto. (192 x 149mm). Final blank. Traces of old inoffensive waterstaining at inner margins, final blank with pieces torn away. Disbound. Housed in modern grey paper folder with title label. Provenance: J.G. Wigg (early identification of the author on title and two-line signed bibliographical note on title verso). In very good condition. Extremely rare.

Rothschild 1991; Teerink 478.
A defence of the Whig Lords, Somers, Orford, Halifax and Portland, who had been impeached by the House of Commons over the partition treaties concerning the Spanish empire. Ross and Woolley consider it belongs to that end of the spectrum of Swift’s writing occupied by the Tale of a Tub. Making “free use” of historical allegory, it appeals “to his literate audience’s sense of reading as a game, and finds similarities and parallels in ancient history for a bewildering array of details and figures on the contemporary political scene” (Swift, J. Major Works, ed. A. Ross and D. Woolley (Oxford, 2008) p.612n). Teerink in Library, 5th series, IV, 1949, 201 distinguishes two issues of the first edition, x and w, printed mainly but not entirely from different settings of type; and concludes that w was the later impression, partly reset to meet an unexpected demand. Frank H. Ellis, in his 1967 edition of the work, shows that this second impression “corrects a dozen errors” present in the first (p. 184). This copy appeared in the Davidson Sale 2015 Christies NY.