[Rarebooks] fa: SIR THOMAS POPE BLOUNT - ESSAYS ON SEVERAL SUBJECTS 1691

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 17th, 18th, & 19th-century titles, auctions ending Sunday, Sept. 9. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/8m5vmbm

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

Thomas Pope Blount: Essays on Several Subjects. Written by Sir Tho. Pope Blount. London: Printed for Richard Bently, in Russel-street in Covent-Garden, MDCXCI [1691]. FIRST EDITION. Small 8vo (15.75 cm) in later calf, gilt-lettered spine label, marbled endpapers; [6] + 179 + [1] pp. ESTC R14871; Wing B3348.
Rubbing to the spine and binding extremities; title-page trimmed and laid down; two leaves (contents page and pp. 143-4) with chipping and loss to the fore-margins, just touching the text of the latter; scattered toning and light foxing; otherwise clean and sound, firmly bound. Front (blank) flyleaf with a neat ink annotation in an early hand.

Sir Thomas Pope Blount (1649-1697) was the elder brother of Dryden's friend Charles Blount. Knighted by Charles II and made Commissioner of Accounts under William III, Blount was the epitome of the seventeenth-century "man of parts": well-bred, well-educated, "a lover of liberty, a sincere friend to his country, and a true patron of learning… His talents for original remark appear from his Essays, which, in point of learning, judgment, and freedom of thought, are certainly no way inferior to those of the famous Montaigne" (Alexander Chalmers, General Biographical Dictionary; 1812-17).

If the titles of the first two essays are any indication, Blount was also something of an intolerant crank: "That Interest Governs the World: And that Popery is nothing but Priest-Craft, or an Invention of the Priests to get Money" and "The great Mischief and Prejudice of LEARNING:  And that a Wise Man ought to be preferr'd before a Man of LEARNING." On the other hand, one might be inclined to share the more positive opinion expressed by the DNB: A "freedom from conventionality, and [an] air of comfortable cynicism pervades them, a cynicism recognising the  enormous prevalence of stupidity and falseness of all kinds, but also possessing a cheerful conviction of the possibilities of amendment." Also present are essays on education and custom, the ancients, passion, etc.