Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Present State of Wit (1711) In a Letter to a Friend in the Country
    The Present State of Wit (1711) In a Letter to a Friend in the Country
    The Present State of Wit (1711) In a Letter to a Friend in the Country
    Ebook80 pages1 hour

    The Present State of Wit (1711) In a Letter to a Friend in the Country

    By Donald F. (Donald Frederic) Bond, W. Earl Britton, Abel Boyer and John Gay

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    The Present State of Wit (1711) In a Letter to a Friend in the Country

    Related to The Present State of Wit (1711) In a Letter to a Friend in the Country

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      PARCEL of ROGUES

      Jun 19, 2020

      PARCEL of ROGUES
      3 min read

    • Article

      From The Trojan War To Conflict In Ukraine

      Nov 30, 2023

      THE YEAR 2023 HAS BEENrich in works composed in tempore belli. The most impressive is Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine (William Collins, £26) by General David Petraeus and the historian Andrew Roberts. This is an ambitious and

      6 min read

    • Article

      Chapter & verse

      Feb 10, 2023

      Chapter & verse
      7 min read

    • Article

      Chapter & verse

      Feb 10, 2023

      Chapter & verse
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Gentleman’s Magazine

      Feb 11, 2020

      From the 1730s to the 1830s the Gentleman’s Magazine provides us with an excellent way of confirming the births, marriages and deaths of middle-class and aristocratic families. The title also offers a fascinating insight into the world of 200–250 yea

      3 min read

    • Article

      When London Really Was Built Back Better

      Nov 25, 2021

      LONDON, MOST FASCINATING of great cities, has been very badly damaged by dreadful developments in recent years, many of them money-led, but devoid of any feeling for context or even for human beings. Meanwhile the wreckage of whole areas through ideo

      4 min read

    • Article

      Where Will Your Reading Take You?

      Mar 10, 2023

      by Susan Ronald An intriguing study of the male and female ‘influencers and enablers’ who actively worked towards blinding Britain, the US and even Germany to what Adolf Hitler and his accomplices were planning, and enacting, in the years before and

      5 min read

    • Article

      Making England

      Oct 20, 2021

      LIKE the Bible, the Revd Gilbert White’s The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne is never out of print. The comparison is neither invidious, nor sacrilegious. White’s account of the birds and bees of his Hampshire parish, first published in 1

      4 min read

    • Article

      In The Book Club

      Jun 15, 2022

      In The Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      When Britain Broke Ranks

      Aug 31, 2023

      When Britain Broke Ranks
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Mar Vellous Miscellany

      Feb 11, 2023

      In these columns I have inevitably tended to focus on the longer, high-profile volumes which make up the backbone of the Society’s publication list, so it is a pleasure to be able to turn in this issue to a too-often neglected genre: the miscellany v

      2 min read

    • Article

      'The Story Of Britain' Is An Eminently Readable History Of The Isles

      Feb 21, 2019

      The book made fine, invigorating reading two decades ago, and it still does (making room, of course, for the addition of the Brexit referendum). Author Roy Strong leads readers smoothly through rulers and epochs, with a narrative style that's happily

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un’s Notes

      May 4, 2022

      * With the Platinum Jubilee upon us, it’s time to look forward to the 70th anniversary of the Young Elizabethan, too. Founded in 1948 as Collins Magazine for Boys & Girls, it was renamed the Young Elizabethan to celebrate the Queen’s Coronation. In 1

      6 min read

    • Article

      Mystery Hunt

      Nov 17, 2020

      Mystery Hunt
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Ultimate Social Climber

      May 3, 2021

      The Ultimate Social Climber
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un's Notes

      Feb 8, 2023

      The Old Un's Notes
      4 min read

    • Article

      Blast Of Romance

      Oct 7, 2020

      ONE of the better-known images of Bonnie Prince Charlie is the one painted by John Pettie a century after the Prince’s death. It shows him pausing as he enters the ballroom at Holyroodhouse accompanied by two Highland chieftains, perhaps Lochiel and

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Landscape Was His Mistress

      Feb 9, 2022

      IN 1802, John Constable wrote seven observations and resolutions about art. In them, among other things, he pledged to follow Nature, to make ‘unaffected’ pictures, and to avoid ‘common place people’. He also declared that ‘there is no easy way of be

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Painter’s Progress

      Nov 10, 2021

      The Painter’s Progress
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Mania For Maiolica

      Dec 6, 2023

      Elisa Paola Sani (Paul Holberton, £50) THE three founders of the Courtauld Institute and Gallery in 1932 were not only philanthropists, but collectors. Samuel Courtauld’s Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings are the most widely known of the

      5 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The Editor

      Dec 2, 2020

      CONTINUING on the theme of COUNTRY LIFE being used as place mats (Letters, November 11 and 18), I’m hoping that these stockings fillers, which I made during lockdown, will be welcomed by my family this year. First place mats, now drinks coasters—what

      2 min read

    • Article

      EROS The STATUE

      Jun 7, 2019

      EROS The STATUE
      3 min read

    • Article

      Classical Corner

      Mar 24, 2022

      Classical Corner
      7 min read

    • Article

      The King Of Westminster

      May 24, 2023

      The King Of Westminster
      5 min read

    Reviews for The Present State of Wit (1711) In a Letter to a Friend in the Country

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Present State of Wit (1711) In a Letter to a Friend in the Country - Donald F. (Donald Frederic) Bond

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Present State of Wit (1711), by John Gay

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: The Present State of Wit (1711) In A Letter To A Friend In The Country

      Author: John Gay

      Release Date: January 27, 2005 [EBook #14800]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRESENT STATE OF WIT (1711) ***

      Produced by David Starner, Linda Cantoni, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

      Series One:

      Essays on Wit

      No. 3

      John Gay, The Present State of Wit (1711)

      With an Introduction by

      Donald F. Bond

      and

      a Bibliographical Note

      and

      Excerpts from

      The English Theophrastus: or the Manners of the Age (1702)

      With an Introduction by

      W. Earl Britton

      The Augustan Reprint Society

      May, 1947

      Price: 75c

      GENERAL EDITORS: Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Edward N. Hooker, H.T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles 24, California.

      Membership in the Augustan Reprint Society entitles the subscriber to

      six publications issued each year. The annual membership fee is $2.50.

      Address subscriptions and communications to the Augustan Reprint

      Society, in care of one of the General Editors.

      EDITORIAL ADVISORS: Louis I. Bredvold, University of Michigan; James

      L. Clifford, Columbia University; Benjamin Boyce, University of

      Nebraska; Cleanth Brooks, Louisiana State University; Arthur

      Friedman, University of Chicago; James R. Sutherland, Queen Mary

      College, University of London; Emmett L. Avery, State College of

      Washington; Samuel Monk, Southwestern University.

      Lithoprinted from Author's Typescript

      EDWARDS BROTHERS, INC.

      Lithoprinters

      ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN

      1947

      THE

      Present State

      OF

      WIT,

      IN A

      LETTER

      TO A

      Friend in the Country.

      LONDON Printed in the Year, MDCCXI

      (Price 3 d.)

      INTRODUCTION

      Gay's concern in his survey of The Present State of Wit is with the productions of wit which were circulating among the coffee-houses of 1711, specifically the large numbers of periodical essays which were perhaps the most distinctive kind of wit produced in the four last years of Queen Anne's reign. His little pamphlet makes no pretence at an analysis of true and false wit or a refining of critical distinctions with regard to wit in its relations to fancy and judgment. Addressed to a friend in the country, it surveys in a rapid and engaging manner the productions of Isaac Bickerstaff and his followers which are engrossing the interest of London. In other words it is an early example of a popular eighteenth-century form, of which Goldsmith's more extended Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning is the best known instance.

      As such it well deserves a place in the Augustan Reprints series on wit. It has been reproduced before in this century, in An English Garner: Critical Essays and Literary Fragments (Westminster, 1903, pp. 201-10), with an attractive and informative introduction by J. Churton Collins. More information, however, is now at our disposal in the forty year interval since Collins wrote, both in regard to John Gay and to the bibliography of periodical literature in Queen Anne's time. Furthermore, the Arber reprint is difficult to obtain.

      Gay is writing, he tells us, without prejudice either for Whig or Tory, but the warm praise which he extends to Steele and Addison makes his pamphlet sound like the criticism of one very close to the Whigs. Though Gay is ordinarily associated with the Tory circle of Swift and Pope, he was in 1711 still in the somewhat uncertain position of a youngster willing to be courted by either group. His earliest sympathies were if anything on the side of the Whigs, in spite of the turn of events in the autumn of 1710. Gay's interests in these early years are nowhere so well analyzed as in the early pages of W.H. Irving's John Gay: Favorite of the Wits (Durham, N.C., 1940): cf. the title of the second chapter: Direction Found—the Year 1713. Even as late as 1715 Swift apparently thought of him as a Whig (Swift's Letters, ed. Ball, II, 286, cited by Irving, p. 91).

      One need not be surprised, then, to find Gay eulogizing Captain Steele as the greatest scholar and best casuist of any man in England, an essayist whose writings have set all our wits and men of letters on a new way of thinking. Swift's reaction is well known. Dr. Freind was with me, he writes to Stella on May 14th, "and pulled out a two-penny pamphlet just published, called, The State of Wit, giving a character of all the papers that have come out of late. The author seems to be a Whig, yet he speaks very highly of a paper called the Examiner, and says the supposed author of it is Dr. Swift. But above all things he praises the Tatlers and Spectators; and I believe Steele and Addison were privy to the printing of it. Thus is one treated by these impudent dogs" (Journal to Stella, ed. J.K. Moorhead,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1