What is the nature, essence and definition of a fart? What are the consequences and disadvantages of suppressing one? Why is farting considered to be taboo? Swift's The Benefit of Farting argues eloquently, in a forceful a posteriori fashion, that most of the distempers thought to affect the fairer sex are due to flatulences not adequately vented.

To complete the excursus into this venerable and age-old human activity, Charles James Fox's Essay upon Wind provides a detailed analysis, classification and history of farting, peppered with wit and curious anecdotes about particularly...

Inspired by Boileau's Lutrin and illustrating the debate within European intellectual circles between the "Ancients," who argued that all essential knowledge was to be found in classical texts, and the "Moderns," who claimed that contemporary learning superseded the old sources, The Battle of the Books shows Swift at his wittiest and most trenchant. In this early satire, various books in St James's Library take on a life of their own and come into conflict with one another, in a pastiche of the heroic epic genre.

As well as providing humorous reflections on the nature of scholarship...