SOURCE: Some Literary Eccentrics, Archibald Constable and Company, 1906, pp. 1-34.

In the following essay, Fyvie contends that the purpose of The Life of John Buncle, Esq. was to explicate Unitarian religious principles.

In one of his Round Table essays, Hazlitt makes some highly eulogistic remarks on a book which is scarcely known, even by name, to the present generation of readers; and, not content with describing it as one of the most singular productions in our language (which without a doubt it really is), this brilliant but paradoxical critic assures us that 'John Buncle is the English Rabelais.' Both Buncle and Rebelais, he contends, were enemies of too much gravity; both had 'the insolence of health'; the business of both was to enjoy life; and, if the one indulged his spirit of sensuality in wine, in dried neats' tongues, in Bologna sausages and botargos, the other showed...