The Humourist. Being Essays upon Several Subjects:Treating of New-writers, Enthusiasm, Spleen, Country Entertainment, Love, History of Treatinanage, Ambition and Pride, Idlencss, Euckleness of human Nature, Prejudice, Witchcraft, Ghosts &c., Weather, Female Disguises, Art of modern Conversation, Use of Speech, Punishment of staying at Home on Sunday &c., Criticism, Art of Begging, Anger, Avarice, Death, Grief, Keeping the Ten Commandments, Travel misapply d, Flattery, Abuse of Words, Credulity, Eating, Love of Power, Expedients to get rid of Time, Retirement, Story of W. Hacket the Enthusiast.

Fourth edition: xxx; [6], 240, [12]pp, ownership inscription in pen to title page, woodcut initials, head and tail pieces, armorial bookplate to front pastedown, sprinkled calf, ruled in gilt, contrasting red roan lettering-piece to spine, spine numbered I in gilt (complete in one vol. according to ESTC, the BL. copy of the 1741 edition is also numbered I and bound uniformly with a second vol, containing the 1735 edition of the text), joints rubbed but holding, head cap worn, 12mo (16.5 x 10.5 cm) London, Printed for T. Woodward et al, 1741.

A fascinating miscellany attributed to the Whig pamphleteer and classicist Thomas Gordon (d.1750), comprising 34 essays on various themes from enthusiasm (“Of all Sorts of Madness, a religious Delirium is that which, in my Opinion, calls for the most Pity”), to grief (“It covers the Soul with Blackness and Horror”).

Gordon’s reflections on witchcraft and ghosts show him to be ahead of his time. Questioning why women rather than men suffered under the accusations, he noted “first, the Men having the whole Discretion of this Affair, are wise enough to slip their own Heads out of the Collar; and, secondly, an old Woman is grown by Custom to the most avoided, and most unpitied creature under the Sun, the very Name carrying contempt and Satire in it”.

ESTC records only 4 copies in institutional collections in the British Isles.

Provenance: Francis Erys, Enys, near Penryn, Cornwall (bookplate); Jno’ Enys (inscription).

[ESTC T152044.]