The phrase ' A Tale of a Tub' was used by Sir Thomas More to describe a pointless speech. Ben Jonson gave the name to an early comedy, in which one of the characters was 'Squire Tub.' Defoe, in a pamphlet published in 1704, on the grievances of Irish Dissenters, speaks of a certain Bill as a 'Tale of a Tub,' exactly in the sense here used by Swift, from whom it is quite possible that Defoe borrowed the phrase.