Strange and Whimsical Performances: William Smellie, Alexander Gillies, and the Paratexts to A Treatise of Modern Faulconry

James Campbell’s A Treatise of Modern Faulconry appeared in 1773, accompanied by an anonymous Preface and a long, anonymous Introduction. The Preface ignores the Treatise and offers a burlesque of the first volume of Lord Monboddo’s The Origin and Progress of Language ; the Introduction offers fantastic tales of falconry that scarcely resemble the actual practice. This essay argues that the Preface was written by Alexander Gillies, a Presbyterian minister, and the Introduction by William Smellie, the printer and natural historian. However, authorial attribution is but one portion of the story. It is shown that both men had some antipathy to falconry, that Gillies held deep reasons for challenging the thought of Monboddo, and that Smellie maintained long-standing concerns about the treatment of animals. In this way, these paratexts also enter eighteenth-century debates on the status of the human and the animal.