[** Transcriber's Notes: -[oe] ligatures have been replaced with straight oe, -Greek transliterations have an "=" sign before and after -each stanza has a number footnote, e.g. [1], to a corresponding excerpt from Horace's The Art of Poetry. **] THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY [JAMES BRAMSTON] THE ART _of_ POLITICKS (_1729_) _Introduction by_ WILLIAM KINSLEY PUBLICATION NUMBER 177 WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES _1976_ GENERAL EDITORS William E. Conway, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles David S. Rodes, University of California, Los Angeles ADVISORY EDITORS James L. Clifford, Columbia University Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago Louis A. Landa, Princeton University Earl Miner, Princeton University Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles Lawrence Clark Powell, William Andrews Clark Memorial Libr James Sutherland, University College, London H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles Robert Vosper, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library CORRESPONDING SECRETARY Beverly J. Onley, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library INTRODUCTION The meagre information known about James Bramston's life has been ably summarized by F. P. Lock in his introduction to _The Man of Taste_ (ARS 171). For our present purposes, we need only add that Bramston seems to have been acquainted with Pope, who saw _The Art of Politicks_ before it was printed and thought it "pretty".[A] Bramston quite likely met Pope through John Caryll, whose Sussex estate, Lady-Holt, was in the neighborhood of Bramston's parishes. _The Art of Politicks_, Bramston's first English poem, was published anonymously in 1729 and advertised in the Monthly Chronicle of 8 December. Several reimpressions followed, as did another London edition, one from Edinburgh, and two from Dublin, all dated 1729, and a London edition of 1731.[B] It was reprinted in Robert Dodsley's _Collection of Poems, by Several Hands_ (1748), where it was attributed to Bramston, and in John Bell's _Classical Arrangement of Fugitive Poetry_, Volume 5 (1789), with a few notes.[C] Horace Walpole's copy of Dodsley's _Collection_, with a few rather uninformative manuscript notes, is now in the British Library (C.117.aa.16).