[Rarebooks] fa: "ARTHUR DUCK" - THE THRESHER'S MISCELLANY, or POEMS ON SEVERAL SUBJECTS - 1731

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, May 24. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/mft586p

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

Arthur Duck [pseudonym]: The Thresher’s Miscellany: or, Poems on Several Subjects, Written by Arthur Duck. Now a poor Thresher in the County of Suffolk, at the Wages of Five Shillings and Six Pence per Week, though formerly an Eaton-Scholar [sic]. Dedicated to the Right Honourable the Earl of Macclesfield, in Order to be Read to her Majesty, and in Hopes of Her most Gracious Favour… The Fourth [i.e., third] Edition. London: Printed for A. Moore, near St. Paul's, 1731. (BOUND WITH:) [Anti-Pastor [Matthew Tindal]: A Second Address to the Inhabitants of the Two Great Cities of London and Westminster: Occasion’d by A Second Pastoral Letter. With remarks on Scripture Vindicated, and some other late Writings. London: Printed J. Peele, at Locke’s Head in Amen-Corner, 1730.] Two works in one volume; 8vo (19 cm) in modern plain boards; [8], 24 pp.; 102 pp. (second work lacks title-page); woodcut head- and tail-pieces. ESTC N27380; Foxon p. 200 (for the first work); ESTC T90068.

As ESTC points out, both the author's and publisher's names are fictitious. A satirical attack on the historical Stephen Duck, the self-taught "thresher-poet" whose rustic rural verses had caught the attention of Queen Caroline, who granted him a pension, and thrust him into national fame, much to the annoyance of better-established men of letters such as Jonathan Swift, John Gay and Alexander Pope. The latter, on reading Duck's work, remarked testily that "most villages could supply verses of equal force." In the preface of the present work, the fictitious "Arthur Duck" describes himself as a cousin of Stephen Duck, "double the Age" of his kinsman, and so doubly deserving of renown and a pension. The poems include such pseudo-rustic ditties as: Roger and Ursula, or Love in a Hog-Sty; Epitaph on my Uncle's Ape; Caroletta, or The Shepherdess; Epitaph on a Sexton; etc. Though the final page reads "The end of part I," there was no second part published. Interestingly, the real Duck's poems, which had only been seen in manuscript previously, were first published, in a pirated edition, in 1732, a year after the appearance of this satire. The second work is a defense of deism by Matthew Tindal (1657-1733), rationalist theologian and author of the controversial Christianity as Old as the Creation; or, the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature.

Some dust-soiling to the title-page and last page of the first work and the last page of the second; second work bound in without the title-page; an occasional small light spot or two to the leaves, but both works are unusually clean and crisp, firmly bound.