AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY
ANTHONY COLLINS




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]

In a comparison which likens him to Sir Roger de Coverley, there is less
truth than fiction. What they did share was a love of the countryside and
a "universal Charity" towards its inhabitants. For the most part, however,
we can approximate Collins's personality by reversing many of Sir Roger's
traits. Often at war with his world, as the spectatorial character was
not, he managed to maintain an intellectual rapport with it and even with
those who sought his humiliation. He never--as an instance--disguised his
philosophical distrust of Samuel Clarke; yet during any debate he planned
"most certainly [to] outdo him in civility and good manners."[2] This
decorum in no way compromised his pursuit of what he considered objective
truth or his denunciation of all "methods" or impositions of spiritual
tyranny. Thus, during the virulent, uneven battle which followed upon the
publication of the _Discourse of Free-Thinking_, he ignored his own wounds
in order to applaud a critic's

_suspicions that there is a sophism_ in what he calls my
_hypothesis_. That is a temper that ought to go thro' all our
Inquirys, and especially before we have an opportunity of examining
things to the bottom. It is safest at all times, and we are least