Anthony Collins was cast in an unflattering light and dismissed

out-of-hand by early critics who included the classical

scholar Richard Bentley, the philosopher Bishop Berkeley and

the satirist Jonathan Swift. His correspondence, particularly

with John Locke - the most intense and seminal of his friend-ships

- and Pierre Des Maizeaux - among the most protracted

and certainly best documented, shows him very differently

and sets the stage for a proper appreciation of the most penetrating

and philosophically acute of the early 18^th century

English free-thinkers.