Αρετη-λογια or, an Enquiry into the Original of Moral Virtue; wherein The False Notions of Machiavel, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Mr. Bayle [...]

Full title: Αρετη-λογια or, an Enquiry into the Original of Moral Virtue; wherein The False Notions of Machiavel, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Mr. Bayle, as they are Collected and Digested by the Author of The Fable of the Bees, are Examin’d and Confuted; and the Eternal and Unalterable Nature and Obligation of Morale Virtue is Stated and Vindicated. To which is prefix’d, A Prefatory Introduction, In a Letter to that Author. By Alexander Innes, D. D. Preacher-Assistant at St. Margaret’s, Westminster.

8vo. pp. xli, [1], 333, [3]. Signatures: A4 a-b8 c4 d2 B-Y8. Bound in contemporary paneled calf. Pitfirrine bookplate.

First edition of a remarkable literary theft, adorned with forged authorship. In 1726 Archibald Campbell (1691-1756, Scottish minister and theologian) sent the manuscript of his reply to Bernard Mandeville’s still-anonymous ‘Fable of the Bees’ to Alexander Innes in London – a cleric best known for having met the young ‘George Psalmanzar’ abroad, and coached him on his impersonation of a ‘Formosan’ refugee – to arrange publication. Instead, Innes instead published the text in 1728 as entirely his own work, impudently adding a ‘Prefatory Introduction’ and sidenotes that perverted several of Campbell’s arguments. Campbell responded with astonishing mildness in 1730, but in 1733 released a corrected version, revealing in his own new preface Innes’s unforgivable duplicity (see Bib# 9736961/Fr# 408.2 in this collection).

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