Odes Subjects, First Edition (5 results)

VG with light browning to cover edges, minor rubbing to spinal ends and corner tips, fore edges have a few spots. ; 8vo, original blind-stamped ivory boards, 52pp. , uncut, unopened, head and tailpieces. Limited edition facsimile of the rare first edition from 1747.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good Condition. First Edition. Later cloth backed marbled boards, endpapers refreshed, slight toning to page edges, scattered very minor foxing, otherwise a fine, bright copy; with the half title bound in. Morocco bookplate of John Drinkwater with some offsetting to endpaper. 54pp Size: Quarto (4to). Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: Under 1 kilo. Category: Poetry; Inventory No: 046591.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. Quarto, later three quarter calf gilt, small hole in half title, else very fine and with partially uncut lower edges.

No Binding. Condition: Good. 1st Edition. Quarto, disbound, old linen spine splitting, light foxing or age tanning, complete with half title.

8vo, pp. lxiv, 255; a good copy in contemporary panelled calf (very slight wear to the tips of the spine). First edition: the author's principal collection of verse. Leonard Welsted (1688-1747) was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he never acquired a degree. He began to publish verse when he was in his early twenties, and after some vacillation allied himself with the Whigs, becoming a kind of secretary or assistant to Richard Steele; he later held a minor government post, and supplemented his salary by literary patronage. Welsted is now chiefly remembered for his quarrels with Pope, which were carried on with virulence on both sides. A Grub-Street contemporary, Bezaleel Morrice, characterized Welsted's poetry, with some justification, as 'modish', but there is evidence that his works were read with interest by superior writers such as James Thomson and Oliver Goldsmith. Of particular note in this volume is the long critical essay with which the book begins, discussing such topics as taste, wit, genius, and the rules of poetry; included are comments on Dryden, Milton, Settle, and Cowley. Included in this essay is a passing hit at Pope, for a line in his Essay on Criticism ('And what now Chaucer is, shall Dryden be'): 'But whoever this writer is, he certainly judg'd the matter wrong'. This is in fact a slight misquotation, as Pope had written 'And such as Chaucer is'. Pope, who was notoriously quick to be irked, did not fail to respond. Also included in this volume are pastorals, occasional poems, translations from Horace, Ovid, and Tibullus, a few prologues and epilogues, and a rather charming poem called 'Apple-Pye', which Welsted later said was his first attempt at verse. Foxon p. 677; Guerinot, Pamphlet Attacks on Pope, pp. 88-90. Provenance. Early armorial bookplate on the verso of the title-page of John Orlebar (1697-1765), of the Middle Temple, who was MP for Bedford 1727-34.