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.

Gay is writing, he tells us, without prejudice "either for Whig or