Author: [SMART (Christopher)]
Title: An Index to Mankind: Or Maxims Selected from The Wits of all Nations, For the Benefit of the Present Age, and of Posterity: Intermix'd with some Curious Reflections, with a Preface by the late Mr. Pope. [The Student's Companion: Being a Collection of Historical Quotations From the best Ancient and Modern Author, on All Sorts of Subjects, Alphabetically Digested, page 85].
Description: Dublin: Printed by and for James Hoey..., 1754. FIRST DUBLIN EDITION. 12mo, 168 x 96 mms., pp. [x] 9 - 176, with additional sectional title at page 85, as above, contemporary calf, neatly rebacked, with red leather label; annotations in pencil on verso of leaf before title-page, names on front paste-down end-paper and title-page marked out, short tear in fore-margin of L3, natural flaw in fore-margin of N4 with loss of two or three letters, but a very good copy. Christopher Smart (1722 - 1771) was at the time of the publication of this work was one of the stable of writers maintained by the publisher John Newbery, whose step-daughter Smart married. He had also made a contract about this time with another publisher, Thomas Gardner, to be a contributor to a monthly. How this work came to be printed in Dublin when Smart was dependent on London publishers is probably known to someone, but not, alas, to me. Smart perhaps undertook the venture to show that he had a "serious" side to his character and was not just a "wit." The work was first published in London in 1751 and was reviewed in the July issue of The Monthly Review, without much enthusiasm: "'Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.' This quotation is the preface above-mentioned, and said to be Mr. Pope's; and which is her very well applied, by way of opposition to those authors and booksellers whose title pages and prefaces are only calculated to raise expectation in their readers, which they rarely come up to; it seems also to be particularly levelled at a late production of a similar nature with these maxims, which is thought to have been greatly indebted for its extraordinary success to a nation artfully and industriously propagated, of its being the work of a nobleman of whose talents the public has long entertained a very high opinion. Our readers scarce need to be told that we mean the oeconomy of human life; a performance which has been more admired and condemned than any that that hath appeared within our memory. But this it may be perceived will not be the fate of the piece now before us, which wants the pompous stile and air of novelty that so much recommended the other; and therefore may not sell so briskly, though the collection is a good one, and contains a great number of most excellent moral and miscellaneous thoughts from the best writers in our own languages." Robert Dodsley's The Oeconomy of Human Life by an 'Ancient Bramin' (1750) was one of the most reprinted works of the latter part of the 18th century; Smart's managed five appearances, the first edition of 1751, this Dublin edition, and one other editon in 1757. Uncommon. ESTC T117111 locates four copies only: BL, Bodleian, TCD; and Sydney. Copac adds Cardiff, Manchester, and Leicester. OCLC adds Boston Public, University of Minnesota, Case Western Reserve, and University of Queensl and Sydney in Australia.

Keywords: anthology education prose


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