said: “But I would be particularly informed of the success and sale of the Letter to D

    r

   Rogers;

   because, if it could be, I would add to a new edition thereof two or three as sheets; which also might be sold separately to those who have already that Letter.” For all his militant polemic, he asked only that his “Adversaries” observe with him a single rule of fair play; namely, that they refrain from name-calling and petty sniping. “Personal matters,” he asserted, “tho they may some times afford useful remarks, are little regarded by Readers, who are very seldom mistaken in judging that the most impertinent subject a man can talk of is himself,” particularly when he inveighs against another.

     [5]

   If Collins had been made to look back over the years 1676-1729, he probably would have summarized the last twenty with a paraphrase of the Popean line, “This long controversy, my life.” For several years and in such works as

    Priestcraft in Perfection

   (1710) and

    A Discourse of Free-Thinking

   (1713), he was a flailing polemicist against the entire Anglican hierarchy. Not until 1724 did he become a polished debater, when he initiated a controversy which for the next five years made a “very great noise” and which ended only with his death. The loudest shot in the persistent barrage was sounded by the

    Grounds and Reasons

   , and its last fusillade by the

    Discourse concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing

   .

     [6]

   During those five years Collins concentrated upon a single opponent in each work and made it a rhetorical practice to change his “Adversary” in successive essays. He created in this way a composite victim whose strength was lessened by deindividualization; in this way too he ran no risk of being labelled a hobbyhorse rider or, more seriously, a persecutor. Throughout the

    Grounds and Reasons

   he laughed at, reasoned against, and satirized William Whiston’s assumption that messianic 

 Prev. P 3/245 next