Moral Verse, Including Anti-Slavery Works
[POETRY.]
The Muse in a moral Humour: being, a Collection of agreeable and Instructive Tales, Fables, Pastorals, &c. by several Hands. [–Vol. II]. London, Francis Noble, and John Noble, 1757–8.
Two vols, pp. [ii, advertisements], iv, 232; [iv], 242, [2, advertisements]; a very good copy in contemporary speckled sheep, of vol. I cracked, covers of vol. II detached.
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The Muse in a moral Humour: being, a Collection of agreeable and Instructive Tales, Fables, Pastorals, &c. by several Hands. [–Vol. II].
First edition, scarce, complete in two volumes though according to a note at the end of volume II the first volume could also be bought separately (which implies a smaller print-run for the sequel).
This compilation of verse fables includes poems by Pope, Prior, Parnell, Dodsley, and Dodd, as well as the ‘working-class’ poets Stephen Duck and Mary Leapor, and many anonymous contributions. Duck had committed suicide in 1756; an abbreviation of his Avaro and Amanda, a version of the anti-slavery tale of Inkle and Yarico, is included here as the opening poem of volume I, while volume II has the anonymous ‘Inkle and Yarico’ itself. Among the anonymous works, probably drawn from periodicals, are ‘The Contented Clown’, ‘An Enthusiasm, occasioned by walking through a church-yard’, and ‘A Young Lady’s Advice to one lately married’.
The initial advertisements are for the popular collection The Muse in Good Humour (1745), which had by then reached a sixth edition and a second volume (1757), and on which the present anthology is clearly modelled.
ESTC T130696.