SOURCE: Introduction to "The Present State of Wit" by John Gay, Augustan Reprint Society, Ser. I, No. 3, May 1947, pp. 1-5.

In the following essay, Bond discusses the possible political biases revealed in Gay's review of the periodicals circulating in London coffeehouses of the early eighteenth century. With some attention to Gay's treatment of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, Bond suggests that this early work may indicate Whig leanings that predate Gay's association with the more Torysympathetic Swift and Pope.

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...