As Times go, I think it no great Crime to own, that now and then, when Business will permit, I love a chiruping Glass, in the Company of such Friends to whom my own may be acceptable; and the better to prevent all impertinent Chit Chat, and the little Feuds and Controversies that are too apt to arise, at present, about Dukes and Doctors, Dutch Memorials, the Changes of the Ministry, and many other epidemical Fanaticisms, that have wormeaten the Brains of the whole Nation, having a musical Genius, I am seldom unfurnish'd with some Madrigal or other, proper to preserve an innocent Mirth from the modish Incursions of State-Politicks, to which almost every Trading Citizen is become a noisy Pretender...
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Friday, June 30, 2017
I Love a Chiruping Glass, Free from Incursions of State-Politicks
[Edward Ward (1667-1731),] "Preface" to The Tipling Philosophers. A Lyrick Poem. To which is subjoin'd, A
short Abstract of their Lives and most memorable Actions. (London: J.
Woodward, 1710):