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8vo, pp. iv, 46; in modern boards. First edition. Despite what to the modern ear is an unpromising title, this is a poem of considerable charm, widely admired at the time of its publication, and much anthologised thereafter. Matthew Green (1696-1737) had a post in the customs-house, where one of his duties was to supply the cats on the premises with milk. Surviving anecdotes indicate that he was a witty and convivial man with friends in the literary world. He died at the early age of 41, and shortly afterwards his friend Richard Glover saw this poem through the press, along with a short preface; Pope praised the originality of these verses, and Gray greatly admired them as well. Green in fact published nothing in his lifetime other than a 14-page poem called The Grotto, privately printed and now extremely rare. The Spleen is a light-hearted guide to living a life without care, preferring plays, music, books, and the company of women, to ambition, party strife, money-making schemes, and the levees of the great. To Green, writing to his friend Cuthbert Jackson, the requirements for contentment, for an absence of 'spleen', were straightforward: Two hundred pounds half-yearly paid, Annuity securely made; A farm some twenty miles from town, Small, tight, salubrious, and my own; Two maids, that never saw the town; A serving-man not quite a clown; A boy to help to tread the mow, And drive, while t'other holds the plough (p. 35). One would, of course, need an occasional break: With trips to town, life to amuse, To purchase books, and hear the news, To see old friends, brush off the clown, And quicken taste at coming down; Unhurt by sickness' blasting rage, And slowly mellowing in age (p. 39). Boswell writes of telling Johnson about a dispute between Goldsmith and Robert Dodsley over whether or not the last generation had produced any poetry of worth; Dodsley had taken a positive view, and had cited The Spleen as an example. Johnson observes: 'I think Dodsley gave up the question. He and Goldsmioth said the same thing; only he said it in a softer manner than Goldsmith did; for he acknowledged that there was no poetry, nothing that towered above the common mark. You may find wit and humour in verse, and yet no poetry. Hudibras has a profusion of these; yet it is not to be reckoned a poem. The Spleen, in Dodsley's Collection, on which you say he chiefly rested, is not poetry.' At the end of the preface is a paste-on 'corrigenda' slip, not present in all copies. Foxon G283; Hayward 159; Rothschild 1083. Seller Inventory # 23437
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