INTRODUCTION
NOTES
NOTES TO THE GRACES
THE_GRACES
THE_FINE_GENTLEMAN'S_ETIQUETTE
Publication Number 81
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
University of California
Los Angeles
1960
Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan
Ralph Cohen, University of California, Los Angeles
Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles
Lawrence Clark Powell, Clark Memorial Library
W. Earl Britton, University of Michigan
Emmett L. Avery, State College of Washington
Benjamin Boyce, Duke University
Louis Bredvold, University of Michigan
John Butt, King's College, University of Durham
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Louis A. Landa, Princeton University
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Ernest C. Mossner, University of Texas
James Sutherland, University College, London
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
Edna C. Davis, Clark Memorial Library
Even though the disasters which overtook John Stubbs and William Prynnein the days of Elizabeth and Charles I no longer faced the pamphleteer,the eighteenth century saw many an anonymous publication, for whilehands and ears were less in jeopardy, author and publisher might wellsuffer imprisonment, as William Cooley and the printer of the Daily Postlearned in the winter of 1740-41, and John Wilkes in the 1760's. One canunderstand why, despite the absence of personal danger, a public figurelike Lord Chesterfield should yet conceal his connection with a piece onthe Hanoverian troops, or why Horace Walpole might often not put hisname to an item listed in his Short Notes of his life or young Boswellto his communications to the press. Indeed, many an innocuous writingappeared anonymously, for the bashful author, protected against themiseries of conspicuous failure, could always shyly acknowledge asuccessful production. Later, perchance, it could appear in hiscollected works.
The two pieces here reprinted, typical verse pamphlets of the 1770's,illustrate both a type of writing and an age. The subject of both iscontemporary—the best-selling Letters to his Son of LordChesterfield. The method falls between burlesque and caricature; the aimis amusement; the substance is negligible. Neither poem made more than aripple on publication, neither initiated a critical fashion, and neithersurvived in its own right, yet each has merit enough to justifyinclusion today in such a series as the Augustan reprints.
Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, the subject of these twoburlesques, were announced as published on April 7, 1774, sca