Collections of an Only Child: Seventy Years a Bibliophile, the Library of Justin G. Schiller

New-Haven: Printed for John Hotchkiss and B. Mecom, 1766. First edition. 8vo. (iv), 124 pp. Association copy, from the library of American physician and political polemicist Benjamin Gale, and with his signature on front blank. Full contemporary mottled brown sheep, ruled in blind, rebacked, boards and extremities scuffed, corners worn; all edges trimmed; ownership stamp of the Rev. A.C. Baldwin on front paste-down; scattered light spotting to text. Evans 10262; Howes C-423; Sabin 13212; Reese, The Struggle for North America 17

An important association copy of this early history of Yale College, written by its president, Congregational minister Thomas Clap (1703-67), and from the library of his chief political nemesis, Benjamin Gale (1715-90). Gale was an American physician, scientist, political polemicist, and Yale graduate (listed on p. 109). A justice of the peace and deputy on Connecticut's General Assembly, he led the Old Light party as the dominant faction in Connecticut politics during the mid 18th century. As an "enemy to all sorts of Tyranny, civil military and ecclesiastical", Gale's "lifelong objective was to weaken the hold of the orthodox clergy upon the thought and institutions of Connecticut", and thus, beginning in 1754, he targeted Clap, then one of the most powerful men in New England (George C. Groce, Jr., "Benjamin Gale", The New England Quarterly, December 1937, pp. 700-701). A decade-plus long pamphlet war ensued between the men, culminating in 1766 with Clap's resignation from the Yale Presidency. He died three months later. Clap made a "lasting and important impression on the college but, in casting up accounts, it should be remembered that Benjamin Gale contributed more than any man of his generation toward a public opinion which demanded a college free of denominational restrictions." (Groce, p. 704).