hundred copies of the illustrations were ated from the original blocks, without text, and in colours; and in 1834 the ks were again used for an edition ted at the Chiswick Press under the intendence of John Thompson. This on is apparently based on the second on of 1713, and has a Preface by Shakespearian scholar, Samuel Weller r, which, as already hinted, does not any new light upon the book. It ins, besides, several mis-statements, that the author was living in 1733, eas he died in 1724; and that his ait by Cole was first prefixed to the edition of 1723, whereas it was ved by Vertue in the third edition of —mis-statements which appear to ina very superficial acquaintance with bject. Mr. Singer also professed to the title-page of the 1733 edition, hat he gives does not represent that title-page. Apart from these editorial lapses, the Chiswick Press edition of The Club is well produced and printed.' As regards Puckle's Club itself, not very much is required in the way of introduction. In this " Dialogue between Father and Son," the son describes to his sire the different personages he has met the night before at the Noah's Ark Tavern. This he does in the manner of Theophrastus, or rather in the manner of those imitators of Theophrastus, Butler and Earle. The old gentleman comments sententiously upon each character as described, showing preternatural gifts as a discursive 1 It is only right to state that for some of the particulars given above, the Author of this Introduction is indebted to the Bibliographical Notes on a Collection of Editions of the Book known as "Puckle's Club," printed in 1899 for the Rowfant Club of Cleveland, Ohio, one of whose members, Mr. George W. Kohlmetz, possesses an unrivalled series of copies of Puckle, which was exhibited at the Club House in March, 1896. reader, and what Sydney Smith would have called a forty-parson power of improving the occasion. Not only does he quote freely, but he also borrows freely without acknowledgment. Thus, when he says at p. 19, "He whose jests make others afraid of his wit, bad need be afraid of their memory," he is simply putting into his own words a sentence from Bacon's Essay on "Discourse,"—" Certainly, he that hath a Satyricall vaine, as he maketh others afraid of his Wit, so he had need be afraid of others Memory." This is probably only one of many similar annexations. Indeed, the author admits in the preface to the supplement on "Death" (which, by the way, must have been added not long before his own decease), that many hints therein "have been borrow'd, and some whole sections either transcrib'd or trans the ingredients, nor who made up the dose." The result is a hotch-pot of maxims and aphorisms, some of which are wise, some quaint, some shrewd, and some (inevitably) commonplace. The main defect of the whole may be expressed in a sentence of Bacon, of which, as far as we are aware, the compiler has not made use:"Reading good Bookes of Morality, is a little Flat, and Dead." But there can be no doubt of Puckle's unfeigned desire "to expose Vice and Folly;" and his multifarious manual certainly deserves the distich contributed to the third edition by an admirer (H. Denne): "Quanta Seges Rerum! parva patet Orbis in Urbe; Et patet in Libro, BIBLIOTHECA, Tuo." Which has been thus Englished: "In a small City as the World's display'd; So in thy Book's large store, a Library's convey'd! EALING, October, 1900. AUSTIN DOBSON, |