THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY

ANTHONY COLLINS

A DISCOURSE CONCERNING Ridicule and Irony IN WRITING

(1729)

_Introduction by_ EDWARD A. BLOOM AND LILLIAN D. BLOOM

PUBLICATION NUMBER 142 WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

1970

GENERAL EDITORS

William E. Conway, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ George Robert Guffey, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Maximillian E. Novak, _University of California, Los Angeles_

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

David S. Rodes, _University of California, Los Angeles_

ADVISORY EDITORS

Richard C. Boys, _University of Michigan_ James L. Clifford, _Columbia University_ Ralph Cohen, _University of Virginia_ Vinton A. Dearing, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Arthur Friedman, _University of Chicago_ Louis A. Landa, _Princeton University_ Earl Miner, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Samuel H. Monk, _University of Minnesota_ Everett T. Moore, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Lawrence Clark Powell, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ James Sutherland, _University College, London_ H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., _University of California, Los Angeles_ Robert Vosper, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY

Edna C. Davis, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Roberta Medford, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_

INTRODUCTION

Between 1710 and 1729 Anthony Collins was lampooned, satirized, and gravely denounced from pulpit and press as England's most insidious defiler of church and state. Yet within a year of his death he became the model of a proper country gentleman,

... he had an opulent Fortune, descended to him from his Ancestors, which he left behind him unimpair'd: He lived on his own Estate in the Country, where his Tenants paid him moderate Rents, which he never enhanced on their making any Improvements; he always oblig'd his Family to a constant attendance on Publick Worship; as he was himself a Man of the strictest Morality, for he never suffer'd any Body about him who was deficient in that Point; he exercised a universal Charity to all Sorts of People, without any Regard either to Sect or Party; being in the Commission of the Peace, he administered Justice with such Impartiality and Incorruptness, that the most distant Part of the County flock'd to his Decisions; but the chief Use he made of his Authority was in accommodating Differences;...[1]

Table of contents (by pages)

• 1: A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writi
• 2: Not until 1724 did he become a polished debater
• 3: He substituted Edward Chandler
• 4: Which is presupposed to Revelation
• 5: As they always use towards the laity
• 6: Presume to correct by critical emendations
• 7: But though the persona could not accept Whiston's program
• 8: Whose hostility to the deist was articulate and compulsive
• 9: And when Punishment for Drollery is never call'd for
• 10: 8 To Des Maizeaux 24 June 1727 B
• 11: Upon Occasion of the Much Lamented Death of the Revd
• 12: Never to be treated with Buffoonery and Banter
• 13: Hence Stillingfleet 's Popish Adversaries
• 14: And the Droll the Inquisitor
• 15: These two Books of Erasmus are his Colloquies
• 16: That the Clergy said Eachard had crucify'd Hobbes
• 17: Beveridge 's Refusal of the Bishoprick of Bath and Wells
• 18: As acting the virtuous Part of Droles
• 19: Or in any particular Species of Drollery
• 20: And I concur with the Psalmist 57
• 21: The more exquisite the Buffoonery
• 22: Their Mercurius Pragmaticus's
• 23: That Popery is so foolish and absurd
• 24: Whitby has written a Book against Transubstantiation
• 25: Written among us against Popery
• 26: He began with Transubstantiation
• 27: And palms upon us Catholick Consent
• 28: The religious Exercise of good Churchmen upon Sundays
• 29: Who was a Philosophical Drole
• 30: Is an ingenious Irony on that Sermon
• 31: By publishing an Answer to the said Irony
• 32: Was an inexhaustible Source of Drollery 103
• 33: Which is so much upon the Drole
• 34: Who call'd himself Trepidantium Malleus
• 35: And hath been sung at many a Whitsun Ale
• 36: Which is also a continued Banter
• 37: Lesley 's Books against the said Bishop
• 38: Atterbury has lately forc'd a Dedication upon you
• 39: Sherlock has wrote upon Popery excepted
• 40: After citing several Scurrilities of the Dean 126
• 41: And a Ridicule upon a High Church Book of Heylin 's
• 42: For a Specimen how well these antient Pagans could drole
• 43: Hoadley among many other odd Engines
• 44: In answer to the Charge of the Nonjurors
• 45: Particularly on the Dunciad 1730
• 46: CALIFORNIA 90018 General Editors William E
• 47: 37 Preface to Stillingfleet still against Stillingfleet
• 48: 61 Shaftesbury's Characteristicks
• 49: And in his Convocational Controversy
• 50: Either inside punctuation or spaced between words