8vo. xxxii, 544pp. With half-title. Contemporary gilt-tooled speckled calf. Rubbed and marked, with wear to extremities, staining and scoring to boards. Armorial bookplate of John Seale to FEP. Leaves lightly browned, light scattered spotting.

The first edition of bookseller John Dunton's (1659-1732) compilation of poetic whimsies, paradoxes, and anecdotes. Dunton's chief achievement was the creation of The Athenian Society, through which he published his Athenian Mercury, England's first major periodical. The subjects of this volume vary from the whimsical to the scatological, but focus chiefly on human foibles and ignorance, and the relationship of the sexes, including eight of John Donne's 'Paradoxes and Problems', reprinted without acknowledgement.