[Rarebooks] fa: OLD SERPENT'S REPLY TO THE ELECTRICAL EEL -1777 (PRIAPIC SATIRE re: ROYAL SOCIETY, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN etc)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 17th & 18th-Century English works,  
auctions ending Sunday, April 3. More details and images can be found  
at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://shop.ebay.com/arch_in_la/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

The Old Serpent’s Reply to the Electrical Eel. London: Printed for M.  
Smith, and sold by the booksellers near Temple-Bar and in Paternoster- 
Row, LDCCLXXVII [1777]. FIRST EDITION. Tall 4to (28.5 x 22.5 cm),  
stitch-bound as issued, in modern custom portfolio; [4] + 22 pp.; with  
the half-title. ESTC T42178.

One of a number of scabrous, erotic and humorous works inspired by the  
discovery of the South American "electrical eel". In 1774, the  
celebrated surgeon John Hunter presented a paper to the Royal Society  
on the eel's properties, and in 1776-77 five living specimens were  
exhibited in London and became the sensation of the season. The  
phallic metaphor of an eel that discharged an "electric spark or  
stroke" was not lost on pamphleteers and poetasters of the day and  
they quickly let loose a flurry of works with titles like The  
Electrical Eel; or Gymnotus Electricus; The Torpedo, A Poem to the  
Electrical Eel, Addressed to Mr. John Hunter, Surgeon; and An Elegy on  
the Lamented Death of the Electrical Eel... By Lucretia Lovejoy.

In the present work, the "Old Serpent" (Satan) asserts his superiority  
over this uppity newcomer, this "poor, small Electrick Eel," when it  
comes to reproductive potency and, of course, size. He boasts of his  
sexual conquests through the ages, from Eve to Cleopatra to Queen  
Elizabeth and Peg Woffington ("Was it an Eel did this?... / It was the  
Serpent in his tail, / That conquer'd wanton miss"). Of particular  
interest are the anonymous author's references to some of the leading  
figures of the day, including Benjamin Franklin, who warrants an  
extended footnote all to himself ("the celebrated republican who is  
negociating with France on the part of America..."). Also mentioned  
are the inventor David Hartley, the actor David Garrick, John Wilkes,  
Lord Chesterfield, Sir Fletcher Norton and an ailing Lord North  
(suffering from a "distemper of an American sort").