A Manner of Correspondence: A Study of the Scriblerus Club by Patricia Carr Brückmann (review)

HUMANITIES 463 example~ for whom indolence represented something far less ambiguous than LaBossiere's survey suggests. Such perspectives are here neglected. On a more mundane level, his book might also have benefited from a more rigorous editing: La Bossiere's syntax is densely convoluted, and typographical errors sometimes reduce it to incoherence. A single example will suffice: 'As Pope and Johnson themselves testify, the moral state neoclassical sagacious balancing is well designed to induce most closely resemble sedation, whether peaceful or troubled or, perhaps~ even annihilating.' The effort required to make sense of such statements canitself induce 'sedation.' LaBossiere's book is admirably erudite: the range of his references is impressive, and the scope of this study suggests his wide reading. His insights are always interesting and suggestive (if not always convincing), while his theme is an important one. It is to be hoped that he wilt in the future, allow himself the leisure and space to paint his 'big picture' more fully and satisfactorily. (MARK MC DAYTER) Patricia Carr Bri..ickmann. A Manner ofCorrespondence: A Study of the Scriblerus Club MeGill-Queen's University Press. xii, 184. $49.95 For several months in 1714, a group of writers calling themselves the Scriblerus Club Qohn Arbuthnot, John Gay, Thomas Parnell, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and sometimes joining them Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford) met weekly on Saturdays. Events combined to end their regular meetings- Swift departed for Dublin, Queen Anne died, the Tory ministry fell- and the Scriblerians' lives were tl-)ereby changed, in varying degrees~ politically, socially, geographically, and literarily. Their subsequent powerful association endured these changes, however, through correspondence , collaborative work~ influence, and inspiration beyond the brief period of their initial meetings. Like the brjef tenure of their meetings, their explicit collaboration produced only one work, the ficbonal Memoirs of Martin us Scriblerus, a satire on false tastes and practices in learning narrated by their burlesque creation~ 'a man of capacity enough, that had dipped into every art and science, but injudiciously in each/ printed in the second volume of Pope's prose works in 1741. But the lively, varied, and important productions of these writers' ranging, collaborative talents, fuelled by an energizing combination of fierce alienation from and scrutinizing commitment to their society's politics, art, philosophy, religion, and manners, continued to inspire one another's work. Patricia Carr Briickmarm's A Ma11ner of Correspo11dence: A Study of the Scriblerus Clllb offers a reading of the Scriblerians' 'common spirit' that first drew them together and subsequently supported their long-term alliance. Bruckmann undertakes in the book's four chapters 'to describe Scriblerian 464 LEITERS IN CANADA 1997 ideals and Scriblerian anxieties, to trace some parallels and influences, and finally to suggest how these ideals and anxieties shaped their writing.' In chapter 1, 'The Province of the Friend,' the author posits and examines distinctive qualities of these writers' friendship, their informing sense of themselves as a group, and the centrality of the classical notion of 'amiability' as theme throughout their work. In chapter 2, 'Gardens and Parks,' Briickmann examines the Scriblerian positive pastoral ideal of accurate, contemplative, LULselfcentered association with nature and its varieties of expression both within and beyond the irrunediate circle of official Scriblerians (for example, Bolingbroke, Henry Fielding, and Laurence Sterne). In chapter 3, moving from the pastoral ideal to its disturbing antitheses, 'Monsters and Metropolis,' the author examines varieties of dehwnanization through obsession, focusing on Swift, Pope, and Gay, and again moving beyond the immediate circle to include, most notably, Fielding and Wordsworth for the light these subsequent writers shed on as well as reflect from Scriblerian ideas and ideals. The final chapter, .JScriblerian Fictions,' continues and elaborates earlier referffices to Fielding and Sterne as what Bruckmann calls useful 'analogues for reflections on the Scriblerian style' and identifies such influential predecessors as Rabelais, Erasmus, and Sir Thomas More. This chapter examines the Scriblerian creation of audience as central to its ethos of displacement, disengagement, and the re-creation of healthy community through active engagement with literary history chiefly through the reader-response drama of allusion. Patricia Carr Bruckmann has written a useful book. She has contributed positively to a body of scholarship and criticism...