University of Virginia Library

It is well known that there are two editions of Oliver Goldsmith's Essays dated 1765, both said in the imprint to be "for W. Griffin": one with an engraved titlepage (1765A);[1] the other a cheaper edition with a title-page printed from type (1765B).[2] No careful attempt has been made to determine which of these editions is the first. In his bibliography of first editions of Goldsmith's writings Iolo A. Williams describes 1765A and does not mention the other edition.[3] Temple Scott, on the other hand, describes both editions and argues for the priority of 1765B:

This argument is by no means conclusive. Although it is remarkable that 1765B, if it is the later edition, has a printed title-page, various reasons might be suggested why the title-page plate engraved for 1765A could have been inaccessible when another edition was printed. More important, Scott's last sentence states the reverse of what I take to be the normal procedure; Griffin might rather be expected to make the first edition attractive in appearance in order to create a demand and then possibly to take advantage of the demand with a cheaper edition.

A direct comparison of the texts of 1765A and 1765B leads to no demonstrable conclusion for one or the other as the first edition. Fortunately, however, the problem of priority is readily solvable by comparing the two editions with an earlier state of the text. As is suggested by the motto "Collecta revirescunt" on the title-page of the Essays, Goldsmith was republishing essays and poems which he had previously contributed to newspapers and periodicals, and the original texts are available for all but the last of the twenty-seven pieces. For the collected Essays Goldsmith made very extensive revisions, which appear in both 1765A and 1765B; the two editions are clearly not independent reprintings of the periodical texts. One of the editions, consequently, was printed from the revised periodical texts, whereas the other was derived from this first edition;[5] and the order of the editions can be determined by

discovering which one is closer to the periodical texts. I attempt to list below all the variants in substantives where one of the 1765 texts agrees with the periodical version and the other differs from it.

                                                                     

Page and line (from 1765A)	Bee	1765A	1765B
1.16	at a loss	at a loss	at loss
4.20	extraordinary pages	extraordinary pages	pages extraordinary
6.22	am	am	I am
37.17	[No paragraph division]	[No paragraph division]	[Paragraph division]
72.18	possible a	possible a	possible that a
75.17	for Sundays	for Sundays	for Sunday
121.16	on a string	on a string	in a string
123.18	and and	and, and	and,
	Lloyd's Evening Post
29.7	vainly	vainly	in vain
	Citizen of the World [6]
91.22	the joke sake	the joke sake	the joke's sake
95.12	an hundred	an hundred	a hundred
112.6	greater efforts	greater efforts	great efforts
	Royal Magazine
131.7	habitation	habitation	inhabitation
131.14	ingratitude	ingratitude	gratitude
132.9	over our heads	over our heads	above our heads
135.6	we have no	we have no	we no
137.3	put it into	put it into	put into
	Public Ledger [7]
149.5	They have all	They have all	They all have
	British Magazine
166.4	came upon them	came upon them	came in upon them
167.24	one of his legs were	one of his legs were	one of his legs was
168.10	made a bishop	made a bishop	made bishop
170.2	heard	heard	had heard
187.17	fondlings	foundlings	fondlings
192.6	those two months	those two months	those months
197.5	[No paragraph division]	[No paragraph division]	[Paragraph division]
199.11	of Europe	of Europe	in Europe
215.10	sailors and soldiers	sailors and soldiers	soldiers and sailors
	Weekly Magazine
227.23	where	were	where

From this collation 1765A is seen to be very much closer to the periodical texts than is 1765B. 1765B agrees with the earlier texts against 1765A in only two cases: in one instance (227.23) the reading of 1765A is a simple misprint, and in the other (187.17) it appears on critical grounds to be inferior to the reading of the British Magazine and 1765B. 1765A, on the other hand, agrees with the periodical texts twenty-six times when 1765B differs from them. Of these distinctive readings in 1765B three (121.16, 131.14, and 135.6) are obvious errors, and three others (112.6, 131.7, and 137.3) seem on critical grounds to be inferior readings. The other twenty instances, however, are all indifferent readings not clearly inferior to 1765A; indeed a number of them—the correction of grammar at 167.24, for example—appear to be attempts at obvious improvement. In these twenty cases it is highly improbable that either Goldsmith or a printer would have returned in 1765A from the readings of 1765B to those of the periodical texts; it is very much more probable that 1765A is the first ediiton and that 1765B represents a stage of the text still further removed from the periodical version.[8]

When 1765A is recognized as the first edition, 1765B is seen to contain a number of features that call for explanation. (1) It is not described as the second edition; rather the edition of 1766 is called on the title-page "The SECOND EDITION, corrected." (2) No new edition, as far as I have been able to discover, was advertised in the newspapers during 1765.[9] (3) The printer of 1765B did not employ the

title-page plate engraved for 1765A or even the picture cut from that plate and used as a vignette in 1766. (4) 1766 bears a close physical resemblance to 1765A; it is, indeed, as far as corrections and additions permitted, a page-for-page reprint of the first edition. 1765B, on the other hand, is not a paginal reprint; it is, rather, a cheap reprint which does not attempt to imitate the physical make-up of 1765A. (5) 1765A has at the end a leaf advertising nine books printed and sold by W. Griffin; 1766 advertises these same books and fourteen others. 1765B carries no advertisements.

It is apparent that 1765A and 1766 display a sequence in the practices of Griffin and that the supposedly intermediate 1765B departs from this sequence. The only thing associating Griffin with 1765B is his name on the title-page, and the five features listed above taken in combination strongly suggest that he was not responsible for its publication. If 1765B is in fact a piracy, then (1) there would have been no reason for calling it the second edition, whereas Griffin would naturally have given that designation to 1766; (2) the only result of advertising 1765B as a new edition would have been to call the piracy to Griffin's attention; (3) the engraved title-page plate for 1765A or the picture cut from that plate and used as a vignette for 1766 would not have been available to the printer of 1765B; (4) 1765B does not resemble 1765A in physical make-up because the printer wished, not to deceive people who had seen the first edition, but to produce the volume as cheaply as possible; (5) the printer would have had no interest in advertising Griffin's stock.

Since 1765B can with some confidence be labelled a piracy, none of its distinctive readings—even those which are corrections or have the superficial air of improvements—can be authoritative, and therefore an editor should give no weight to its variants. Even if a less extreme view is taken, and the case for piracy is considered speculative only, an editor will find that there is no distinctive reading in 1765B which could not be a printing variant. In light of this fact, it would appear to be of considerable significance that when the authorized 1766 edition was ordered, the printer was furnished a copy of 1765A, an unlikely occurrence if the readings in 1765B resulted from the author's further revisions. Of even greater importance, Goldsmith, if he were responsible for the distinctive readings of 1765B, might be expected to repeat some of them in his fairly extensive revision of 1765A for this edition of 1766; but for the twenty-eight instances listed above where 1765A and 1765B differ, 1766 invariably agrees with 1765A. Even if the very strong evidence that 1765B is a piracy is ignored, the edition can still be granted no textual authority.[10]