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The Bower of Spring, with other Poems … Edinburgh: Printed for Archibald Constable and Co. and Longman, Hurst Rees, Orme and Brown, London.

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First edition. Brown was professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh and a prolific versifier (‘among the few Classical Writers of this scribbling generation’ according to the Edinburgh Review – for which Brown was a regular contributor).

The title poem, a curious mixture of verse and meteorology, is, according to the Preface, ‘destined to unfold one of the most profound discoveries that have been made in the Philosophy of Nature’, comparable to the works of Newton. Disappointingly, the profound discovery is that summers are backward and winters are longer not for climate change but because Parliaments are rising later to allow wives and daughters of parliamentarians to remain longer in fashionable London. Shorter poems include ‘To Woman’, ‘Chemistry for the Fair’, ‘Musical Murder’, ‘Needless Modesty’, and ‘The Infallible Cosmetic’.

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