AN ODE TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON. By Dr. Akinside.

4to, pp. 26; with a final leaf of advertisements; a little dusty at the beginning and end, stitching a bit loose, but a fine copy, sewn, as issued; in a brown cloth folding case. First edition. There are two printings of this poem, this one with 'Pall-Mall' in the imprint and the third leaf signed B2, the other with 'Pall-mall' and the leaf signed A2. In addition, as first noted by Iolo Williams, three of the four ornaments in the two editions are different; here, for example, the title-page ornament depicts a single bird surrounded by foliage, as opposed to an ornament with a pair of doves in the other version. The two printings are closely related, with portions being done from the same setting of type; Williams argued that the B2 edition was first, but Foxon decided that the order was 'not determined'. Advertisements clearly indicate that there were in fact two editions, one in January and the other the following month. The question of priority was revisited by Robin Dix in the Book Collector (1991, pp. 433-4), who first pointed out two small textual differences, involving the presence or absence of a comma at the end of lines 31 (after 'Themes') and 74 (after 'Athens'). As Akenside was deeply interested in matters of punctuation and typography, and as the commas were omitted in later printings of this poem, it seems highly likely that they were removed at his request, and that the present edition, which includes the commas, can be given priority. Provenance: From the library of H. Bradley Martin; with earlier bookplate of William Hartmann Woodin. Foxon A138.…