The Search Begins, Part 2

D’Isreali picked one of the most colorful quotes for his articles, and I can’t resist quoting it as well, as it’s so superbly purple:

From Pamphlets may be learned the genius of the age, the debates of the learned, the follies of the ignorant, the bévues of government, and the mistakes of the courtiers. Pamphlets furnish beaus with their airs, coquets with their charms. Pamphlets are as modish ornaments to gentlewomen’s toilets as to gentlemen’s pockets; they carry reputation of wit and learning to all that make them their companions; the poor find their account in stall-keeping and in hawking them; the rich find in them their shortest way to the secrets of church and state. There is scarce any class of people but may think themselves interested enough to he concerned with what is published in pamphlets, either as to their private instruction, curiosity, and reputation, or to the public advantage and credit; with all which both ancient and modern pamphlets are too often over familiar and free.—In short, with pamphlets the booksellers and stationers adorn the gaiety of shop-gazing. Hence accrues to grocers, apothecaries, and chandlers, good furniture, and supplies to necessary retreats and natural occasions. In pamphlets lawyers will meet with their chicanery, physicians with their cant, divines with their Shibholeth. Pamphlets become more and more daily amusements to the curious, idle, and inquisitive; pastime to gallants and coquets; chat to the talkative; catch-words to informers; fuel to the envious; poison to the unfortunate; balsam to the wounded; employment to the lazy; and fabulous materials to romancers and novelists.

Essentially, after the near 100-page Preface, Davies gathers together his ‘Republik of Pamphlets,’ sampling just about every sort of pamphlet you can imagine—how tos, sermons, religious doctrine, political doctrine, polemics, poetry, comedy—and then quite literally catalogues them, one by one, discussing their relative merits and influence, so far as he can measure it.

After the Preface and before the catalogue begins, he does attempt an interesting trick, i.e. to pinpoint both the origin of the pamphlet as a literary form and also the origin of the word. The word pamphlet actually has a disputed etymology which can be discerned in your better dictionaries, and Davies attempts to puzzle it all out. But, like a true Englishman, he gives his countrymen the bulk of the credit for the thing in his very first point:

How Exotical and Foreign forever the Word Pamphlet may seem, as to its sound and structure, ’tis nevertheless so much a true-born English Denison, that ’tis scarce ever known or adopted, or even adapted to any other Idiom in the World, but to the English Language alone.

You can view a scan of the frontispiece of the book and other pamphlets at The Pamphlet Collection Flickr photo pool.

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