Poems on Various Subjects. Whereto is prefixed A Short Essay on the Structure of English Verse

Nottingham: Printed for the Author, by Samuel Cresswell, 1765. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. 8vo, 207 x 119 mms., pp. [xix], iii - v, 5 - 32, [4], iii- v [vi blank], [3] - 143 [144 blank], including list of subscribers, title-page in red and black, contemporary speckled calf, red leather label, paper label on cover, with the ownership inscription (in red ink) dated 22 April 1905 of Major C. E. Cresswell on the recto of the front free end-paper and the title-page, the oval armorial library stamp of Lt. Col. William Allen Potter, High Sheriff of Nottingham (1944) on the front paste-down end-paper. A very good to fine copy. This is only publication by Abbott (1730 - 1776), a Church of England Clergyman, that I have been able to trace. The subscribers include Isaac Hawkins Browne, Dr. [Erasmus] Darwin, and Charles Jennens (patron of the arts and librettist), to whom the volume is dedicated. The preface, on the aesthetics of poetry, is given over to a responsible discussion of accents and metre, while the topics of the poems include "The Song of Deborah and Barak," hymns, tributes to marriage, an ode to good humour, translations, Moses, and reprints Addison's "On Liberty." ESTC T42671 locates copies in Birmingham, BL, Cambridge, Bodleian, Nottinghamshire County Library, and Leeds in the UK; Cornell, Folger, Harvard, and McMaster in North America.