Invitation to peace
Arbuthnot, John [Arbuthnot, John.] An invitation to peace: or, Toby's preliminaries to Nestor Ironsides, set forth in a dialogue between Toby and his kinsman. London: printed and sold by Mr. Lawrence, n.d. (1714). 23 pp. 8vo, disbound. First edition. A very amusing Scriblerian contribution to an ongoing pamphlet attack on Addison and Steele, responding in particular to William Wagstaffe's Letter from the Facetious Dr. Andrew Tripe, at Bath, to the Venerable Nestor Ironside. "Toby" was the persona used by Wagstaffe in a previous mock-biography of Steele; he was in fact a nephew of the bookseller Abel Roper, and to judge from the frontispiece portrait in that tract he was feeble-minded. The satire here is much lighter than that of Wagstaffe, a high-church physician who hated all Whigs with a passion; the military metaphor is cleverly maintained throughout, and there are funny allusions to such contemporaries as Jacob Tonson, Swift, and Congreve. At the end is a two-page poem, "To Mr. Ironsides." The attribution of this pamphlet to Arbuthnot is cited by the NCBEL as tentative, but the manner of it is entirely consistent with Arbuthnot's other squibs; the ascription is not queried by the ESTC. A fine copy of a very uncommon satire. Rothschild 47 (listed as anonymous); CBEL II, 1052. 1714
£600
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