Printed by W.S. for Richard and Ralph Simpson near the North Door of St Paul's. London. Third edition. 1708. Octavo. (8), 310pp. Contemporary calf, renewed to spine. Decorative and elaborately blind tooled and speckled to upper and lower boards. Spine in six compartments with raised bands, blind rules, leather label, gilt lettering. Vestiges of floral gilt tooling to edges. Corners slightly bumped and rubbed. Edges sprinkled red. Endpapers toned. Light marginal water stain to lower gutter of title page. Wright Bookplate to fep. A pleasure to hold and to read. Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet (1628-1699) Restoration diplomat, statesman and essayist. Jonathan Swift was his secretary from 1689; the original manuscript of this work was in Swift's hand. Swift began a sequel, but later abandoned it. Samuel Johnson stated Temple was "the first writer who gave cadence to English prose" and modelled his own style upon it. One of the earliest scholarly studies of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman culture. ESTC T136600 Steensma, Robert C. "SO ANCIENT AND NOBLE A NATION": Sir William Temple's History of England. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 77, no. 1 (1976): 95-107. Levine, Joseph M. The Battle of the Books. History and literature in the Augustan Age. Cornell University Press. 1991.