DEFOE, Daniel.

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Reformation of Manners, a Satyr. First edition of Defoe's poem in heroic couplets satirising the sham of 'Reformation of Manners', in which poor offenders are prosecuted while wealthy magistrates and men of rank practise the same vices with impunity. No copy appears in auction records since 1990."The Societies for the Reformation of Manners had been formed in the early 1690s to improve the moral behaviour of the English. The problem, as Defoe saw it in 1702, was that the results of more than a decade of 'Black-Lists' of offenders had been the complete avoidance of any attacks upon the wealthy and the upper orders and a kind of war upon the poor. Defoe's poem was supposed to change that situation by a kind of grotesque series of pictures which revealed the moral failings of the wealthy and powerful" (Seager & Downie, p. 38).Using thinly disguised names, Defoe satirises London magistrates and public figures, before broadening his attack to stockjobbers, doctors, and slave traders: "The harmless Natives basely they trepan, And barter Baubles for the Souls of Men" (p. 17). He then turns to misconduct at court and in the country, "with vituperative sketches of William Cowper, Sir John Wroth, Matthew Prior and John Toland" (Furbank & Owens), before delivering a diatribe against drunkenness.Anonymous publication did not save Defoe from making "enemies among those who thought themselves, or friends, reflected upon; and he was compelled afterward to feel bitterly the offence he had gi

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