Mandeville and Augustan Ideas: New Essays ed. by Charles W.A. Prior (review)

HUMANITIES 231 Du Prey=s book is both compelling and engaging. The text, which is divided into three distinct yet related chapters, benefits from numerous illustrations arranged to complement the subjects under discussion, while concise chronological summaries of the many seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury publications regarding early Christian liturgy and architecture referred to throughout are presented in a helpful appendix. Given the attention which the author pays to the Reverend George Hickes=s rebuttal of Vanbrugh=s recommendations to the commissioners, it would have been convenient had Vanbrugh=s proposals been reprinted for ease of reference and comparison, even though they have previously been published by Whistler (1954) and Downes (1977). (CATHERINE DANTER) Charles W.A. Prior, editor. Mandeville and Augustan Ideas: New Essays. English Literary Studies Monograph Series, no. 83. 144. $15.50 Charles W. A. Prior has assembled a distinguished group of scholars for this collection of essays, most of which originated as papers at the Mandeville Symposium held at Queen=s University, Kingston, in May 1997. The collection seeks to situate Mandeville=s works within his Augustan intellectual contexts; as Prior explains, >the focus is on what Mandeville was writing about and how he was writing it, rather than on what he wrote.= The result is a rich and varied collection, which shows Mandeville=s continuities with seventeenth-century thought as well as his connections to the later eighteenth century and beyond. The opening essay by J.A.W. Gunn focuses on political and historical contexts to analyse Mandeville=s treatments of active citizenship. His dislike of presumptuous coffee-house politicians is evaluated in terms of the growth of English liberty during the period; the essay ends with commentary on how Mandeville=s views affect notions of a British public sphere. Gordon Schochet and Charles W.A. Prior take up various religious and political issues addressed by Mandeville, particularly in the Free Thoughts on Religion. Schochet analyses the work in relation to British debates about religious diversity, showing how Mandeville=s peculiar combination of limited toleration and support for the established church reflect his conception of the English constitution. Particularly effective is Schochet=s closing section, which widens the contexts he has created to analyse how Mandeville=s ambivalences register the distance between older religiously based states and modern secular nations demarcated by territorial bounds. In an essay on English anti-Catholicism, Prior works with what he terms Mandeville=s >refined orthodoxy,= tracing the roots of English orthodoxy from the early seventeenth century as he analyses Mandeville=s focus on the role of religion in maintaining social stability. Mandeville=s defence of the Fable of the Bees, and particularly its short- 232 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 comings, are M.M. Goldsmith=s concern, as he weighs the validity of the arguments on both sides. Malcolm Jack views Mandeville=s thought through the lens of Samuel Johnson=s reactions to it. Although Johnson as a Christian and a moralist objected to aspects of Mandeville, in particular the narrow definition of vice, Jack shows how and why both writers share certain social and even psychological views. The two final essays take up major themes in Mandeville=s work that have been either ignored or inadequately covered in earlier criticism. Thomas Stumpf elegantly analyses the idea of the Golden Age, surveying an impressive array of classical and contemporary contexts that reveal the continuing appeal of the simple life to the great defender of luxury. From Virgil and Lucretius to Chaucer, Dryden, and Goldsmith, Stumpf=s presentation of the range of literary traditions that Mandeville used and allusively twisted is subtle and convincing. Finally, military matters are the subject of Irwin Primer=s essay on the backgrounds of Mandeville=s attitudes towards war. Focusing on the causes of war and the relationships between honour, Christianity, and war, Primer makes a strong case for the influence of Grotius on Mandeville=s martial thought. The focus of this collection on contexts for rather than the contents of Mandeville=s writings was adopted in part to evade continuing difficulties in trying to construct a consistent ideological stance from these works. Even as this approach enlarges the reader=s understanding of Mandeville=s early eighteenth-century...