The Character of a Whig, Under Several Denominations. To which is added, The Reverse, or the Character of a True English-man, in Opposition to the Former.

Bound in full blind ruled calf, re-backed. Board corners renewed. Boards with some wear. Internally, front endpaper renewed, rear retained. The pages are generally clean and free of foxing or stains. The engraving of the Preaching Whig is a strong impression.

In the Character of a Whig, the Whig writer is defined as one who: “is so fond of being Publick, that he will rather be a Blasphemous or a Ridiculous Incendiary, than not be taken Notice of as a Whiggish Author…What a fury will he raise about Nothing, and counterfeit a Foolish Melancholly upon improbable dangers, to excite the brutish passions of the Rabble, upon every slight and frivolous suggestion”.

Some of the Whigs satirized include:

A Busie, Impertinent, Intermedler in Government

“A Sucking  Coffee-House Statesman, A Little Great man of no Business, that is wanting imployment of his own, troubles all the world with his idleness.”

The Hypocritical Preaching Whigs under every denomination

“A heavy Phlegmatick Blockhead, that could never get learning enough at school…age, example, and practice, improves him in all the Arts of Mimical Gestures, affected tones, shuffling his cloak; fingering his band, coughing with an emphasis, spitting with a grace, folding and unfolding his handkerchief according to the original,…and now he has gain’d the reputation of a soul-saving, heaven-gaining, sin-destroying, hell-confounding, pious, precious, zealous, painful, preaching brother.”

The Astrological Whig Physician

“That has twelve houses of his own in heaven, and never a one upon earth, to eat, drink, or sleep in, is a meer insect of idleness, a stationary gipsy, a maggot bred in Lily’s note, or Gadbury’s Posteriors, and smells as rank of fool and knave, as the bub of a partridge at pairing-time.”