AN ESSAY ON CONVERSATION

Folio, pp. [ii], 19; in recent marbled wrappers. First edition. The principal separately-published poem by the grandson of Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Gloucester. Benjamin Stillingfleet (1702-1771) was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, but he was rejected for a fellowship by Richard Bentley, then the Master, who purportedly considered him too much a gentleman to hold such a position; this poem contains several less-than-flattering allusions to Bentley, whose decision was resented: And tho', when roughly us'd, he's full of Choler, As blustering B---y to a Brother Scholar (p. 14) Stillingfleet then spent fourteen years at Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk as the tutor to William Windham. His Essay on Conversation was published just before he took his young charge on the Grand Tour; included is advice on such aspects of a cultivated life as taste, politeness, and the proper use of language. In later life Stillingfleet devoted much time to the study of botany. Stillingfleet's habit of wearing blue instead of formal black stockings at ladies' evening assemblies is said to have given rise to the word 'bluestockings'. This poem was at one point listed as by Henry Fielding, because of confusion with a prose essay of the same title which appeared in the first volume of his Miscellanies; in fact, Stillingfleet's name appears on the title-page of a second edition printed in 1738. Foxon S757; Rothschild 210.…