John Mottley, who strang together the _editio princeps_ of Joe Miller in 1739 for a bookseller, cannot be commended for the skill and care with which he executed his task. It is a singular jumble of anecdotes of all complexions about persons in various walks of life. The seventy-two pages were reckoned, no doubt, dog-cheap at a shilling, under all the imposing circumstances and seeing the choice nature of the miscellany, and the highly distinguished personages to whose _memorabilia_ it strictly limited its cognisance--_videlicet_ and to wit, King Charles II., Mr. Gun Jones, Sir Richard Steele, the Duchess of Portsmouth, a country clergyman, Ben Jonson, Mrs. C----m, Sir William Davenant, two free-thinking Authors, a very modest young gentleman of the County of Tipperary, Tom Barrett, Lord R., Henry IV. of France, the Emperor Tiberius, and others. A richer bill of fare was barely possible, and it is difficult to understand why Mottley should not have been proud to associate himself with such company and with such a feast of delights, instead of employing the pseudonymy of Jenkins. This playful piece of _supercherie_, however, was outdone by the courageous declaration that the contents were mostly “transcribed from the mouth” of Joe himself, and the remainder collected in his society; for, as a serious matter of truth, the sole item in the thin octavo, which the collection makes, really attributable to the then recently deceased comedian, is of a nature calculated to inspire us with satisfaction that the title-page is less veracious than it ought to have been, and almost as much a truant in an opposite direction as was perhaps practicable. The material gathered by Mottley in the first instance was indifferent enough surely; but the solitary specimen which he actually furnishes of the facetious vein of his hero must induce everybody to feel thankful that he stopped short there:-- “Joe Miller sitting one day in the window of the Sun Tavern, in Clare Street, a fishwoman and her maid passing by, the woman said, ‘Buy my soles, buy my maids!’ ‘Ah, you wicked old creature!’ said honest Joe. ‘What! Are you not content to sell your own soul, but you would sell your maid’s too?’”