The following is a very — extremely! — incomplete list of works by and about John Horne Tooke, the Radical political botherer, also a very interesting philologist and, I think it is fair to say, in view of his Diversions of Purley, philosopher, or at least moralist. I have included very little of what he wrote so far. I shall get to it eventually.
Updated 14 January 2026.
The Development of the Diversions
of Purley
Coleridge (Specimens of the Table-Talk, 7 May 1830), says that Horne Tooke ‘had that clearness which is founded on shallowness. … His mind had no progression or developement. All that is worth any thing … in the Diversions of Purley is contained in a short pamphlet-letter which he addressed to Mr. Dunning; then it was enlarged to an octavo … at last, a quarto volume, I believe, came out; and yet … there was no addition to the argument of the pamphlet.’ Coleridge’s judgment of the Diversions is unjust; though given that it is an untimely sort of work the force of whose insights is more easily registered after the intervening two centuries of moral and psychological criticism, the blunder is forgivable.
Here are the three progressive forms the work took.
A
Letter to John Dunning, Esq. (London: J.
Johnson, 1778). — This is the ‘short pamphlet-letter’ Coleridge
mentions.
Έπεα
Πτερόεντα: Or, the Diversions of Purley, part 1
(London: J. Johnson, 1786). — The first version, called ‘part 1’
on the title-page; though only after a decade and the revision of this first
part would the second appear.
Έπεα Πτερόεντα:
Or, the Diversions of Purley, part 1 (London:
J. Johnson, 1798); part 2 (London:
J. Johnson, 1805). — The final realized version. Stephens (Memoirs,
vol. 2, pp. 371–3 — see below) reports that Horne Tooke composed a third
volume; but that ‘[d]uring his last illness he formed the resolution of
destroying all his manuscripts. … The operation was performed in an apartment
above stairs, and lasted during a whole month! An incessant fire was kept up
for that purpose, and one of the young ladies, who was obliged reluctantly to
assist in the conflagration, has since very appositely compared it “to the
burning of the Alexandrian library.” On this occasion, the manuscript alluded
to above’ — the third volume of the Diversions — ‘was wholly consumed. …
I have been informed … that the first word in vol. III, thus unrelentingly
destroyed, was, “BELIEF;” and that a large portion of the manuscript consisted
of a critical examination of the credibility of human testimony.’
Responses to the Diversions
I.
Cassander [John Bruckner?], Criticisms on the Diversions of Purley (London:
T. Cadell, 1790).
About John Horne Tooke
Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, Specimens of the Table-Talk, vol. 1 (London: John
Murray, 1835), passim; vol.
2 (London: John Murray, 1835), passim.
Junius, Posthumous Works of Junius, ed. J. F. [John Fellows?] (New York, NY: G. and C. and H. Carvill, 1829), passim. — Contains Burdett’s ‘Eulogy’ (see above), a ‘Sketch’ of Stephens’s Memoirs (see below), letters from Horne Tooke to John Wilkes, and much more.
William Hamilton Reid, Memoirs
of the Public Life of John Horne Tooke (London: Sherwood, Neely and Jones,
1812). — Given a stinking notice by the Quarterly Review. See below.
Alexander
Stephens, Memoirs of John Horne Tooke: Interspersed with Original Documents,
vol. 1 (London: J. Johnson, 1813); vol. 2
(London: J. Johnson, 1813). — The Quarterly reviewer writes that ‘A
good memoir upon this subject’ — the life of Horne Tooke — ‘would be an useful
accession to our stock of biography, literary and political. When we speak of a
memoir, we of course do not mean a large quarto, or two large quartos, for with
such it is said we are threatened — eked out with declamations and histories
about the American war — dissertations upon the author of Junius — “diatribes”
upon the French revolution, and the speeches of the Attorney General and Mr.
Erskine.’ He is alluding to these two volumes of Stephens’s. Which the 1911 Britannica
describes as ‘written in an unattractive style’; and Stephens as ‘an
admirer only admitted to his’ — Tooke’s — ‘acquaintance at the close of his
days.’
—, ‘Sketch
of the Life of John Horne Tooke,’ in Posthumous Works of Junius (New
York, NY: G. and C. and H. Carvill, 1829), pp. 101–96. — Excerpted from the
Memoirs.
John William Ward, Lord Dudley, review of Reid’s Memoirs in the Quarterly Review, vol. 7, no. 14 (June 1812), pp. 313–28. — Unsigned review attributed by the 1911 Britannica to Dudley.
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