Series One: _Essays on Wit_ No. 3 John Gay, _The Present State of Wit_ (1711) With an Introduction by Donald F. Bond and a Bibliographical Note and Excerpts from _The English Theophrastus: or the Manners of the Age_ (1702) With an Introduction by W. Earl Britton The Augustan Reprint Society May, 1947 _Price_: 75c GENERAL EDITORS: _Richard C. Boys_, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; _Edward N. Hooker_, _H.T. Swedenberg, Jr._, University of California, Los Angeles 24, California. Membership in the Augustan Reprint Society entitles the subscriber to six publications issued each year. The annual membership fee is $2.50. Address subscriptions and communications to the Augustan Reprint Society, in care of one of the General Editors. EDITORIAL ADVISORS: _Louis I. Bredvold_, University of Michigan; _James L. Clifford_, Columbia University; _Benjamin Boyce_, University of Nebraska; _Cleanth Brooks_, Louisiana State University; _Arthur Friedman_, University of Chicago; _James R. Sutherland_, Queen Mary College, University of London; _Emmett L. Avery_, State College of Washington; _Samuel Monk_, Southwestern University. Lithoprinted from Author's Typescript EDWARDS BROTHERS, INC. _Lithoprinters_ ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN 1947 THE Present State OF WIT, IN A LETTER TO A Friend in the Country. _LONDON_ Printed in the Year, MDCCXI (Price 3 d.) INTRODUCTION Gay's concern in his survey of _The Present State of Wit_ is with the productions of wit which were circulating among the coffee-houses of 1711, specifically the large numbers of periodical essays which were perhaps the most distinctive kind of "wit" produced in the "four last years" of Queen Anne's reign. His little pamphlet makes no pretence at an analysis of true and false wit or a refining of critical distinctions with regard to wit in its relations to fancy and judgment. Addressed to "a friend in the country," it surveys in a rapid and engaging manner the productions of Isaac Bickerstaff and his followers which are engrossing the interest of London. In other words it is an early example of a popular eighteenth-century form, of which Goldsmith's more extended _Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning_ is the best known instance. As such it well deserves a place in the Augustan Reprints series on wit. It has been reproduced before in this century, in _An English Garner: Critical Essays and Literary Fragments_ (Westminster, 1903, pp. 201-10), with an attractive and informative introduction by J. Churton Collins. More information, however, is now at our disposal in the forty year interval since Collins wrote, both in regard to John Gay and to the bibliography of periodical literature in Queen Anne's time. Furthermore, the Arber reprint is difficult to obtain.