Scribbles for Spring
[BROWN, Thomas.]
The Bower of Spring, with other Poems … Edinburgh, Archibald Constable & Co., and London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1817.
8vo, pp. [2], 156, [1 (ads)], [1 (blank)]; slightly foxed in parts but withal a very good copy in the original drab boards, printed label to spine (slightly chipped).
First edition of this lively verse collection, with a poem on the parliamentary causes of climate change.
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’.
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).