Introduction, Notes, and Bibliography copyright 1942 by
L. H. BUTTERFIELD
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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King’s Crown Press is a division of Columbia University Press organized for the purpose of making certain scholarly material available at minimum cost. Toward that end, the publishers have adopted every reasonable economy except such as would interfere with a legible format. The work is presented substantially as submitted by the author, without the usual editorial attention of Columbia University Press.
To C. J. F. B.
FOREWORD
Some years ago a literary investigator came into my office and inquired whether he could find a copy of Richard Tickell’s Anticipation in our library. He was thinking of sending to the British Museum for a photostatic copy, in case we could not supply his need. We were able to reply that we had sixteen editions of this book—ten of them printed in the year 1778 alone. Now publishers do not re-issue a book unless someone is reading it. The number of reprints induced me to read the book, and I found it one of the best of eighteenth-century satires on the ponderous serio-comic addresses delivered in what is still pleased to call itself the M-th-r of P-rl—m-nts. Though Mr. Butterfield has restrained himself in the matter of drawing parallels between the bumbling follies of that legislative conclave, then and now, yet the writer of a foreword may be permitted to do so.