RICHARDS (George): — An Essay on the Characteristic Differences between Ancient and Modern Poetry. And the Several Causes from which they result.

[No place ? Oxford] [No publisher] [1789.] FIRST EDITION. 4to, 265 x 194 mms. pp. [ii], 26, cased in modern boards; some soiling of text, fore-margin of title-page frayed and shorter than other leaves. Signed and dated at the end of the text: George Richards, A. B. Trinity College, Oxford, June 26, 1789. With two contemporary autographs on the title-page: \"The Rev. Mr. Price\" and \"F. Kett.\" The poet and clergyman George Richards (1767 - 1837) would have been in his early twenties when he wrote this essay, for which he gained a chancellor's prize at Oxford. Thomas Warton was on the committee that awarded the prize. The work reappeared in 1791 in a slightly different guise: An Essay on the Characteristic Differences between Ancient and Modern Poetry. Richards' writings have attracted a modest amount of scholarly and critical interest, and in particular his treatment of the pastoral in this volume is sometimes cited in studies of that literary form.