Middleton's Works. Five Volumes.

Brown flecked leather binding with red and black title plates, raised banding and gilt lettering on the spine. Volumes 4,5,6 7 and 8. Parts are in Latin. Dimensions are for one volume.

Conyers Middleton (27 December 1683 – 28 July 1750) was an English clergyman. Mired in controversy and disputes, he was also considered one of the best stylists in English of his time. Middleton stayed in Rome during a great part of 1724 and 1725. Henry Hare, 3rd Baron Coleraine, a fellow collector, was his companion on this journey. Middleton made a collection of antiquities, of which he later published a description; he sold it to Horace Walpole in 1744. His first wife, Sarah Morris, died on 19 February 1731. In 1731 Middleton was appointed first Woodwardian Professor of Geology, and delivered an inaugural address in Latin, pointing out the benefits which might be expected from a study of fossils in confirming the history of Noah's Flood. He resigned the chair in 1734, on his second marriage. Middleton's sceptical tendency became clearer, and Zachary Pearce accused him of covert infidelity. He was threatened with a loss of his Cambridge degrees. Middleton replied in two pamphlets, making such explanations as he could. In 1733, however, an anonymous pamphlet (by Philip Williams the public orator) declared that his books ought to be burnt and he should be banished from the university, unless he made a recantation. Middleton made an explanation in a final pamphlet, but for some time remained silent on theological topics. His relationship with Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford was damaged. Middleton's major work, his Life of Cicero (1741), was a success. He was attacked by Samuel Parr in 1787, however, for knowing plagiarism: Parr claimed it was based on De tribus luminibus Romanorum, a scarce work by William Bellenden. Middleton's second wife Mary died in 1745, and he returned to controversial theology in 1747. He looked for ecclesiastical preferment, but was unpopular with the bishops. Middleton lived at Hildersham, near Cambridge, and married again shortly before he died, on 28 July 1750. A modern opinion is that Middleton stood out as an especially lethal species of the polemical divine. At best sarcastic and withering, at worst poisonous and unfair, Middleton justly deserved his reputation. On the other hand, Alexander Pope thought he and Nathaniel Hooke were the only prose writers of the day who deserved to be cited as authorities on the language. Samuel Parr, while exposing Middleton's plagiarisms, praised his style. An edition of his works, containing several posthumous tracts, but not including the Life of Cicero, appeared in four volumes in 1752, and in five volumes in 1755.