Transcriber's Note:

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully aspossible. Some changes of spelling and punctuation have been made.They are listed at the end of the text.

The Augustan Reprint Society

ARBUTHNOTIANA:

The Story of the St. Alb-ns Ghost

(1712)

A Catalogue
of Dr. Arbuthnot's Library

(1779)

Introduction by
Patricia Köster

PUBLICATION NUMBER 154

WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY

University of California, Los Angeles

1972

GENERAL EDITORS

William E. Conway, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles
Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles
David S. Rodes, University of California, Los Angeles

ADVISORY EDITORS

Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia
Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Louis A. Landa, Princeton University
Earl Miner, University of California, Los Angeles
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles
Lawrence Clark Powell, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
James Sutherland, University College, London
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
Robert Vosper, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Curt A. Zimansky, State University of Iowa

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY

Edna C. Davis, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Jean T. Shebanek, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

[Pg i]

INTRODUCTION

The two pieces here reproduced have long been unavailable; theirconnections with Arbuthnot are rather complex. The Story of the St.Alb-ns Ghost has been ambiguously associated with Arbuthnot since theyear of its first publication, but it does not seem to have beenreprinted e the nineteenth century when editors regularly includedit among the minor works of Swift. Whoever wrote it, the Story is alively and effective Tory squib, whose narrative vigor can carry eventhe twentieth-century reader over the occasional topical obscurities. ACatalogue of the ... Library of ... Dr. Arbuthnot has never beenreprinted at all, and appears to be unknown by scholars who have thusfar written about Arbuthnot.

The Story of the St. Alb-ns Ghost, the first piece included, hasalways been of doubtful authorship, and must for the present socontinue. Two days after the Story first appeared, Swift tantalizinglywrote to Stella: "I went to Ld Mashams to night, & Lady Masham made meread to her a pretty 2 penny Pamphlet calld the St Albans Ghost. Ithought I had writt it my self; so did they, but I did not" (22 February1712). Whoever wrote it, the Story succeeded: it was pirated within aweek, and had reached its third regular "edition" within three weeks ofthe first; it appeared in a fifth and apparently final edition on 19July 1712.[1] Now just during these same months Arbuthnot was producinghis first political satires, five pamphlets later gathered under thetitl

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