Author: [GILPIN (William)]:
Title: Three Dialogues on the Amusements of Clergymen.
Description: London: Printed for R. and J. White..., 1796. FIRST EDITION. 12mo, 158 x 97 mms., pp. [iv], 224, including half-title, contemporary half calf, gilt spine, red leather label, marbled boards; joints cracked, binding a little rubbed, but a good copy. Gilpin (1724 - 1804) deployed the dialogue form in one of his first and anonymous publications, A Dialogue upon the Gardens of the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Cobham at Stowe (1748). At the time he had been a clergyman for just over a year, and "he broached, for the first time in his writings, distinctions between moral and aesthetic beauty in natural scenery and ruined buildings, and thereby laid the foundations for his later writings on the picturesque" (ODNB). A definition of clerical amusement is offered earlyk in the first dialogue: "It should intend the exercise of the body, and the recreation of the mind: but it should also be suited to the genius of the profession."

Keywords: dialogues religion prose


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