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An attractive copy of one of the dozens of reprints of Montesquieu’s seminal work, published under the same fictional Cologne imprint as the first edition of 1721. This edition includes the full 150 letters, as in the original printing, rather than the 140 included in Montesquieu’s expurgated version. Not originally intended as a novel, it spawned so many imitations in the form of novels (Lettres juives, Lettres chinoises, Lettres d’une Péruvienne etc) that even Montesquieu realised he had started a vogue: ‘My Lettres persanes taught people to write letter-novels’ (Montesquieu’s Mes Pensées: no. 1621).

An important account of Italy written in a series of one hundred and fifteen letters. A good number of subjects is covered in the course of the letters, from economics, social institutions and local customs to the natural and artistic beauty of Italy. Beginning in the south of France and approaching Italy via Geneva, the author works down the country through Lucca, Pisa, Florence, Rome and Naples. Mercier Dupaty was an academician and magistrate, who was responsible for carrying the enlightened ideas of Voltaire and Beccaria into the courts and reforming the French legal system. This work enjoyed a significant popularity, was frequently reprinted and was translated into English in the same year.

A delightful memento mori in the form of an exquisite volume of posthumous verse by a young girl. The author, Charlotte Penelope Monckton, was the daughter of Robert Monckton-Arundell, fourth Viscount Galway, and Elizabeth Mathew. The first poem in the volume is a poem on the death of her mother in November 1801 and several of the other poems treat of deaths, two of them relating to the death of her brother Augustus Philip, who died in August 1802. The final poem in the volume, ‘Inscription on a Stone erected in Selby Wood, to the Memory of a Favourite Dog’, is dated March 1806, a month before the author’s own death.
With a brief address which turns into a pious dedication leaf:
‘The following artless and unstudied Lines, evidently the momentary Effusions of an elegant and accomplished Mind, possessed of the greatest Sensibility, were doubtless intended by the beloved Writer to be transient; but are now committed to the Press, for the Purpose of presenting a few select Friends with a Memorial of a dear and ever to be lamented SISTER.... Affection alone prompts this Tribute; as those who were acquainted with her amiable Disposition... her mild and gentle Manners... her unaffected Piety... her universal and exemplary Benevolence... her devout Resignation to the Dispensations of Providence, under the severest Afflictions... and had the peculiar Happiness of being ranked among the number of her Friends, can require no other Memorial than their own Feelings.
While her surviving Sisters bow with awful Reverence and Submission to the divine will of the
SUPREME BEING!
they humbly hope they shall not be deemed presumptuous in His Sight, in endeavouring to soften the Affliction of their Hearts, by fondly cherishing the
MEMORY
of Charlotte Penelope Monckton, who was removed from this, to “Another and a Better World”, the 26th Day of April, 1806, aged 21 Years’.

The edition is likely to have been a tiny one, for circulation only to the ‘few select Friends’ as mentioned in the Address and it seems likely for such a project that the other copies may have been similarly bound to this one, in its elegant dark morocco binding, simply gilt.

An attractive set of a scarce chivalric romance by Charles Joseph de Mayer, mostly remembered for his impressive Cabinet des fées, a forty-one volume collection of fairy tales published between 1785 and 1789. The present novel, intended as a continuation of Tressan’s version of Amadis de Gaul, published in 1779, follows the adventures of Lisvart, the son of the Emperor of Constantinople. In keeping with Mayer’s interest in the fairy tale, Lisvart de Grèce includes plenty of fantastical sequences alongside the chivalric. In a fascinating introduction, in which Mayer talks of his involvement with Tressan in the Bibliothèque universelle des romans and discusses the state of French literature, he advises readers to start by reading Tressan’s work before moving on to his continuation, to save confusion between the different characters and generations. He suggests that this is a good time to publish the romances of chivalry, to restore a little French colour into a literature that has of late been besieged by translations from the English and the German. Following the lead of Tressan, Mayer has also attempted to update the genre to make it more accessible to a contemporary audience.
‘J’ai cru devoir imiter le Comte de Tressan... supprimer, ajouter, créer, polir, substituer, arrondir, & rapprocher un peu de nos tems & de nos mœurs la scene ancienne & le vieux théâtre; briser enfin le verre d’un tableau de lanterne magique, pour faire des tableaux vrais & les portraits ressemblans... Je devrois peut-être faire observer que le moment de mettre en lumière les Romans de Chevalerie est plus favorable qu’on ne feroit tenté de le croire. Depuis quelques années, la France ne reçoit & ne lit que des traductions de Romans Anglois, & des fictions prises dans les Auteurs Allemands: il me semble que toutes nos couleurs soient épuisées... il paroît même que les teintes légeres réussiroient; car nos passions paroissent entierement purgées de cette maniere noire qui a marqué nos Romans’ (pp. vi-x).
The novel is accompanied by a sequence of twelve songs, which accompany the text on engraved plates in which both words and musical score are given. These are composed by Pierre-Jean Porro (1750-1831), the influential composer and guitarist. Following the novel are two short stories by Mayer, Amours de Guillaume de St.- Vallier, Troubadour, (V, 255-294) and Amours de Jeanne, Reine de Jérusalem, de Naples, de Sicile, Comtesse de Provence; Roman Historique, (V, 295-330).

An attractive copy with a nice Scottish provenance of this famous handbook of legal and general advice to those in different stations in life. The first part of the work contains specific legal advice to different ranks of lawyers and parties engaged in law suits. After this is a section on ‘Advice to the Monarch’ which is followed by ‘Advice to the Subject’. Further sections are addressed to ministers of state, the landed gentry, the man of wealth, the poor and indigent, the merchant, tradesman, farmer and more general advice to husbands and wives, parents and children, old and young, masters and servants, rich and poor. This is the only known publication by the Jacobite judge David Erskine, generally known under his judicial designation, Lord Dun. An eminent member of the Scottish bar, he was also a jealous Jacobite and friend to the non-jurant episcopal clergy. As a member of the last Scottish parliament, he was ardently opposed to the union.
ESTC notes another issue (t193481), with p. viii correctly numbered and with the amended imprint ‘for G. Hamilton and J. Balfour’. Scarcer than the present issue, it is listed at Aberdeen, Cambridge, NLS and DLC only. Curiously, this copy has a stub before the title page, suggesting a cancel, but given that it has the earlier states of the two pages, it may be more likely that an initial blank has been cut away.

Provenance: Sir John Inglis of Cramond, 2nd Baronet (1683-1771), Postmaster General for Scotland.

A ‘shop of riddles’, this scarce volume of poetry includes three hundred and thirty-seven enigmatic poems or verse riddles on subjects as diverse as the moon, the game of chess, glasses (‘nous sommes deux soeurs de même âge’), carnivals, fables, the opera and a pearl necklace. A key to the solutions is found at the back of the work.

A scarce comic novel by an obscure cleric from the Lake District whose literary output seems to have been confined to three novels which have all but disappeared. He is known to have lived in Westmoreland, where he supported a large family on the proceeds of a small curacy and a school, but whether his income was notably supplemented by the success of his writings is unknown. His first publication was The Denial; or, the Happy Retreat, London 1790, which was sufficiently popular to run both to a Dublin and a second London printing (each of which is listed in ESTC in a couple of copies). The present novel, originally published in London in the previous year by the Robinsons, is a substantial work of fiction which first appeared in the unusual format of five volumes. The first edition is similarly scarce, with ESTC (n4436) listing copies in the BL, Bodleian (ESTC appears to have listed the five volumes as five copies) and Minnesota (OCLC adds Berkeley). A second edition was published by Lane and Newman (though not designated as the Minerva Press) in 1803. Thomson’s third and final novel, Winifred, a tale of wonder, only survives in a London edition of 1803 (not in ESTC, though the BL has a copy).
In the brief preface, Thomson describes the ‘two principle motives’ of fiction as being to amuse and instruct, suggesting that in combining the two in the present work, the more intelligent reader is likely to find but an ‘insipid entertainment’ in the ‘succession of incidents, and the narration of improbabilities, however surprizing, or however brilliant’ whereas he fears that other readers may find the moral reflections to be insipid. Contemporary reviewers seem to have focussed on the bizarre narrative structure and the humour rather than the moral and didactic passages. ‘He has published some novels of more ingenuity than morality’ concluded A Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors in 1816, whereas an earlier reviewer objected to the style of humour, comparing it to the less successful parts of Smollett’s writings: ‘Manners mistaken and misrepresented: conduct ridiculously absurd in characters laboured with the greatest care: adventures too improbable to amuse, and a vein of broad grotesque humour, of outré description, which Smollett introduced, and which his masterly hand could scarcely wield without exciting, at times, disgust. Under Mr. Thomson’s management, it is intolerable’ (Critical Review, 10: 472, April 1794).

An epistolary novel by Auguste Lafontaine, set in Russia in the early eighteenth century and translated by Isabelle de Montolieu, a writer strongly influenced by the German and English literature of the time. Lafontaine’s romantic fiction had a wide readership among women throughout Europe and was enormously popular in England. Summers lists some thirty titles published in English, in some cases in more than one version, many of which, including the present novel, were printed by the Minerva Press. The present novel, first published as Fedor und Marie in 1803, was translated as Dolgorucki and Menzikoff, A Russian Tale, London, Minerva Press, 1805 (see Blakey p. 214). There was also a three volume ‘Londres’ edition of this French translation, also 1804, but Cioranescu gives precedence to this Paris edition.

A good copy of a scarce Munich dissertation on the classification of the sciences, presented under the supervision of the Benedictine philosopher, Leonardo Neumayr and drawing on the work of Moses Mendelsohn, Condillac, Plattner and Wolff. Opening with a section on Logic, the dissertation is neatly presented in clear sections and puts forward a scheme for the division of the sciences. Further sections are devoted to the study of Ontology, Psychology, Natural Theology and Mathematics.

The first and most famous of Brantôme’s Mémoires, this volume includes the outspoken Vies des Dames Illustres. Written after his retirement from public life in 1589, Brantôme had left instructions that his Mémoires should be published, but it was not until 1665 that this first volume appeared. Written in a frank, conversational manner, Brantôme describes his years at the centre of the glittering court and gives detailed and highly personal accounts of his contemporaries. His accounts give a highly colourful picture of court life and his descriptions of the sex lives of the ladies of the court are striking because of his ability to present graphic detail in a straightforward and almost bland style, as if he were talking about the weather.

A light-hearted sentimental novel set in diplomatic circles in Brussels and the Hague. The author, an officer in the cavalry, was a popular novelist ‘connu comme littérateur dans le genre léger où il a fait preuve d’un certain esprit’ (DLF). Desboulmiers, as he was known, also had an interest in the theatre and a broad knowledge of its history. His two most important works on theatre history, Histoire anecdotique et raisonnée du théâtre italien, Paris 1769 and Histoire du théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique, Paris 1769, are still consulted today.
This is one of three novels first published in 1766 by Desboulmiers, the others being De tout un peu ou les amusements de la campagne, Amsterdam 1766 and Honny soit qui mal y pense ou histoires de filles célebres du XVIIIe siècle, Londres 1766. This is the second of two editions of this work which appeared in the same year under the same imprint. MMF record a further three editions.

An important economic treatise on the causes of financial distress in France, with suggested political and economic solutions. Boullainvilliers’ frank exposé of the last years of Louis XIV’s reign was rather too much for the authorities, who had it condemned on publication. His political writings - ‘original to the point of eccentricity’, says Christopher Betts in the New Oxford Companion to Literature in French - were hostile to royal policy and express an extreme version of feudalism, ‘le chef d’œuvre de l’esprit humain’, in which power is returned from the king to the nobles. An expansion of the economic sections of his more famous État de la France, the present work is dedicated to the duc d’Orléans. In common with all Boulainvilliers’ works, the present memoir was published posthumously and outside France.
Boulainvilliers presents his argument in six parts or memoirs, the most striking of which is the second, that comes down heavily against the financiers and proposes a separate office for the state treasure, the third memoir, which attacks arbitrary taxation and the sixth, particularly resonant, which attacks poor financial administration. Boulainvilliers may have been an eccentric, but many of his economic theories were well ahead of his time and anticipated the ideas of the physiocrats, by whom he was much admired.
‘Some scholars happily ascribe all six memoranda under consideration to Boulainvilliers in order (it appears) to enhance his reputation - for once an attractive reputation - as an aristocratic liberal or progressive reformer of the 18th century. In fact, one may exclude from the Boulainvilliers corpus two or even three of the six memoranda under consideration. In keeping with Boulainvilliers' character, the author of memorandum 1 claims no expertise in fiscal matters, recommends instead that some faithful, enlightened, and wise persons screen any financial advice or projects submitted to the regent, and urges him above all to assemble the Estates. Equally consonant with Boullainvilliers' character is memorandum 4’ (H. A. Ellis, S. 244f).

A scarce provincially printed English translation of this first hand account of the aftermath of the 18th Fructidor, originally published as Journal de l’adjutant-général Ramel, Londres 1799. After successfully defending Kehl from the attack of the Archduke Charles, Ramel had been promoted to Commander of the Guard of the Legislature, in which role he denounced the royalist conspiracy of Brottier in early 1797. Despite this, being suspected of royalist sympathies himself, he was denounced in the uprising of 18th Fructidor and was arrested and imprisoned in the Temple. Along with his friends Pichegru, Barthélémy, Laffon de Ladebat and Barbé-Marbois and some six hundred other royalists, Ramel was condemned and deported to the penal colonies in Guiana. In June 1798, Ramel escaped from the penal colony to Paramaribo and thence to London, where this vivid account of the miserable conditions of the camp at Sinnamary and of Ramel’s dering-do escape to England, via Surinam, Berbice and Demerary, was published to wide acclaim.
At least three editions of the French text appeared under ‘Londres’ imprints in 1799; this translation was made from an edition printed in Hamburg in the same year. It was published by subscription and has an impressive list - some fifteen pages - of subscribers, including Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Caroline Lamb.

One of a spate of editions of this best-selling novel, the first semi-fictional account of James Annesley’s tumultuous life, previously attributed to Eliza Haywood (1693-1756). Annesley’s claim to the earldom of Anglesey, one of the wealthiest estates in Ireland, was visciously refuted by his uncle, Richard Annesley, who wanted him out of the way so badly that he had him kidnapped at the age of 12 and shipped to a plantation in Delaware where he was sold into indentured servitude. After several attempts to regain his freedom, James finally escaped to Philadephia and onwards to Jamaica. Here, being recognised by a former school friend, he signed on with the Royal Navy and served for a year under the command of Admiral Vernon. After his return home in 1741, when he accidentally killed a man during a hunting excursion in Scotland, his uncle seized the opportunity to try and get James hanged for murder, but the case was unsuccessful due to witnesses of the accident. The court case for the earldom and the lands then begun, with James being defended by the Scottish barrister Daniel Machercher. Not only was the case a cause celèbre which captured the popular imagination - elements of Annesley’s extraordinary life live on in Smollett’s Peregrine Pickle, 1751, Scott’s Guy Mannering, 1815 and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped - it was also a key trial in the formulation of many important legal precedents.
Although this is complete as published, two further parts later appeared, the second under the title ‘Memoirs of an unfortunate nobleman in which is continued the history of Count Richard’, published later in 1743, and the third part, under the same title as the present first part, followed in 1747. The present edition, which may be the first, is distinguished from other editions of the same year and same collation, by the following points: the second line of the imprint ends ‘and sold’, the catchword on p. 1 is ‘words’ and the vignette on p. 1 is a cherub (in an expansive pastoral scene, looking at a bird through a telescope).

Provenance: with the attractive contemporary armorial bookplate of Bartholomew Richard Barneby, who changed his surname from Lutley to Barneby in 1735, ‘pursuant to the will of John Barneby’ (see the Office of Public Sector Information website). The Barnebys (they were subsequently to change their name to Barneby-Lutley in the nineteenth century) lived at Brockhampton Park, near Bromyard, Hereforshire, until 1946 and the estate is now property of the National Trust.

An attractive copy of this fascinating political memoir in which the Hungarian born diplomat, François de Tott, explores the intricacies of eighteenth century Ottoman despotism from the viewpoint of Western diplomacy. A huge success at the time of publication, this eyewitness account fed the public’s insatiable fascination with the ‘Oriental other’ and challenged the insouciance of Western government. The memoirs follow the Turkish state’s metamorphosis from an agrarian society to a military power, a transformation overseen by Tott, who was highly involved in these military reforms.
A military engineer as well as a diplomat, Tott began writing his memoirs in 1767, the year he became the French consul to the Crimean Tatar Khan. Tott was the most influential of the many self-appointed Western ‘cultural mediators’ that flooded to Istanbul as part of the clan interventionniste in the late eighteenth century. Many Europeans acted as agents or double agents during the conflict, Tott included. His explicit mission was to relay information on the French Trading posts, whilst in secret his task was to encourage the Ottomans to go to war with Russia over Poland. It is clear that Tott felt a sympathy towards the Ottomans, so much so that Voltaire described him as the ‘protector of Moustapha and the Koran’. Nonetheless, Tott was popular among the French as his memoirs were both informative and very entertaining. He had initally travelled east to defend the Dardanelles but he remained to teach the Ottomans how to use artillery and his involvement was crucial in the country’s militarisation.
A nineteenth century biographer, J.C.F Hoefer credits him with ‘dispelling with exactitude, and often with impartiality, the European Myths of the Ottoman empire’. These memoirs were the first eye witness account to be published on the Ottomans, and the conflict over ideology and governance that Tott explores was not only fascinating to the French populus, but also contradictory to the staunch ‘studied ignorance’ of European government. At the time, William Pitt the Younger remained seemingly unbothered by the events of the Ottoman empire despite the despotism that had enveloped it, mainly because of the decline in the Levant trade and the pro-Russian party that resided there.
‘Tott abhorred what he described as the stupidity and cupidity of the Ottoman officer corps, and was contemputous of the quality of the rank and file... Tott’s Memoirs were a phenomenal success partly because such adventures suited the tasetes of a rapidly expanding reading public in Europe. They cap a century of fictional fascination with the East’ (Virginia Aksan, ‘Breaking the Spell of the Baron de Tott: Reframing the Question of Military Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1760-1830’, in The International History Reform, Vol. 24, no. 2, June 2002, pp. 253-277).
First published by the Robinsons in London in 1785 with a second London edition in the following year (see ESTC t121379 and t110203).

First published in 1820, this is the second of several editions of this important account of the '45 by the aide-de-camp to the Young Pretender. James Johnstone, known as the Chevalier de Johnstone, joined the Jacobite Army in Perth shortly after the raising of the standard at Glenfinnan in 1745. He was twenty-six years old and ‘as proud of his kinship with Scots nobility as any Highlander’ (John Prebble). He served as aide-de-camp both to Lord George Murray and to Prince Charles Edward, and fought with the Jacobites through the remainder of the campaign. After Culloden, Johnstone had a number of narrow escapes, hid in Edinburgh and London, and finally made his way to Holland disguised as a maidservant to Lady Jean Douglas.

‘A very interesting work, written under the influence of disappointment and ill-humour, and therefore to be read with caution. Some of the stories narrated are altogether fictitious’ (Lowndes).

A delightful copy of a scarce novel which, as pointed out in the Monthly Review 1782, is misleadingly titled, as the large part of the novel is occupied with the life of Viscount Cherington’s father, Dr Castleford, and takes place, not in Portugal, but in Brazil. Matters of Church and State determine much of the action and the suppression of the Jesuits is a dominating theme. Once one becomes accustomed to the rather surprising switches between generations and the inclusion of detailed back stories, it makes for a fascinating read, with lively descriptions of Brazil, Portugal and Essex, religious intolerance, piracy and smuggling.
In the opening chapters we learn about the hero’s father, Dr. Castleford, who, having trained as a physician in Paris, obtains employment at the English factory in Oporto. While here he is unjustly accused and is subsequently banished ‘by the villainous artifices of a Jesuit’. He is sent as a prisoner of State to Rio de Janero, where he wins the esteem and confidence of the Viceroy - ‘so far a true Portuguese Fidalgo, that ignorance and superciliousness, with a slavish subordination to the church, constituted the leading features of his character’ - and his wife, whose ‘strong natural parts, sound judgement and great degree of penetration’ largely compensated for an entire lack of education. Castleford’s relationship with these two powerful figures is assured after he cures the lady of a terrible illness, after her own physicians had failed to do so. Subsequently, he falls in love, happily and mutually, with Arabella, a young Englishwoman under their protection and the two are married, the wedding a very splendid affair which is described in detail. Further digressions now intervene not only about Arabella’s birth and education but, in keeping with this multi-generational tale, about the story of her parents’ marriage, her father’s trade in Jamaica, attack by pirates, marooning on the isle of Cuba, and, crucially, Arabella’s mother’s Catholicism, which had become a great problem for her in the Essex village where she lived, as the neighbours declared her ‘to be no better than a papist, or a presbyterian’. After this, Arabella’s mother is keen to leave England and accompany her husband to Portugal. Having lost so much of his money in his last trip to the West Indies, he strikes up a business arrangement with a London bookseller and agrees to take out with him a consignment of prohibited books to be sold in Portugal. The bookseller sends two agents with the books to help with their delivery and as soon as they find themselves approaching Portugal, they appear, much to everyone’s surprise, dressed as Jesuits, although not yet knowing that the Jesuits have been expelled from Portugal. On arrival, the customs officials reported the prohibited books and the Jesuits and all four, plus the baby son born on board, are thrown into separate dungeons. We also hear that the bookseller to whom the books were bound, had everything in his shop confiscated before also being imprisoned.
The London edition was published by Joseph Johnson in 1782 and is similarly scarce, with ESTC (t70710) listing copies at BL, Birmingham, Cambridge, Glasgow and DLC; OCLC adds Nebraska and Chapel Hill. This Dublin edition does not appear to be held outside the British Isles.

A scarce edition, under a slightly different title, of Defoe’s Memoirs of a Cavalier, first published in 1720. A work of historical fiction, it is set during the Thirty Years’ War and the English Civil War, with the action taking place in Germany and England. Defoe uses a first person narrative - the story is presented as the discovered memoir of the Shropshire born Colonel Andrew Newport - to unfold political and historical events. Newport leaves for his travels on the Continent in 1630, goes to Vienna and travels with the emperor’s army. He is present at the siege of Magdeburg and describes the sack of the city in vivid detail. He returns to an England in Civil War, joins the king’s army and fights first in Scotland and then against the parliamentarian forces. Critics are divided as to Defoe’s purpose in writing the novel, which is highly political - a warning against the horrors of civil war, an appeal for strong monarchy, an attack on aristocratic kingship - but the novel is also interesting for its portrayal of the cavalier and his martial or masculine identity.

Second edition of Dieudonné Thiebault’s detailed memoirs of the court of Frederick II covering Frederick himself, his family, the court, the Academy, schools, philosophers and intellectuals, and the military and civil government of Prussia. Thiebault had first gone to Berlin in 1765 to take up a post as Professor of Literature at the Academy on the recommendation of d’Alembert. He subsequently became an advisor to the king, helping him with his addresses to the Académie des sciences de Berlin and editing many of his works prior to publication. Thiebault remained in Berlin for twenty years, where he was given a place in the Academy and was granted a pension by Frederick.

Provenance: Michel-Frédéric Pillet-Will (1781-1860), with black labels lettered ‘Pillet-Will’ in gilt at the foot of the spines.

A handsome copy in red morocco of one of the most interesting poetical miscellanies of the late seventeenth century. This collection marks the poetical debut of William Congreve, at the age of twenty-two. His contributions include two imitations of Horace, a Pindaric ode called ‘Upon a Lady’s Singing’, addressed to the well-known soprano, Arabella Hunt, and two songs, ‘The Message’ and ‘The Decay’, signed only with initials. Also of particular interest are three poems by Aphra Behn, all printed here for the first time: ‘On a Conventicle’, ‘Venus and Cupid’ and ‘Verses design’d by Mrs. A. Behn, to be sent to a fair lady, that desir’d she would absent herself, to cure her love’, the last one being ‘left unfinished’.
This is one of the earliest productions of Charles Gildon, at the start of his long and productive, if sometimes controversial, literary career. His own contributions include the translation from Dacier, two poems addressed ‘To Syliva’, an imitation of Perseus and a ten-page dedication to Cardell Goodman, a prominent and wealthy actor, who Gildon clearly had in his sights as a patron. ‘As to the book, Sir, I present you with, I am extreamly satisfy’d to know, that it is a present worth your acceptance; for I may say that there has scarce been a collection which visited the world, with fewer trifling verses in it. I except my own, which I had the more encouragement to print now, since I had so good an opportunity of making so large an attonement, with the wit of others for my dulness, and that I hope will chiefly excuse them to you, as well as convince the world of the real value I have for you, when it sees me prefix your name to no vulgar book, of my own composing, but to one that ows [sic] its excellence to the generous contributions of my friends of undoubted wit’ (Epistle Dedicatory, p. xi).