Translated Specimens of Welsh Poetry in English Verse. With some original pieces and notes

Additional information

First edition, 1782, 10 poems and notes, in modern red marbled boards, no title label. Internally, [4], (v-vii), [1], 36 pp, modern endpapers, evidence of bookplate removal to fpd. (212*129 mm). (ESTC T89351). Apparently very rare, & despite its date apparentlyWalter's earliest collection of verse. The preface (dated from Jesus College, March 1780) defends (confrontationally) the diminutive size of the collection (just 10 poems, with 6 pp of notes at end), and inplies that nothing by the young Welsh collegian preceded it. But his Poems with notes (Oxford 1780) was a much fatter volume, featuring the 68 page celebratory On The Bodleian Library, and on its title Walters is identified as Scholar Of Jesus College, and Sub-Librarian in the Bodleian Library, whereas Translated Specimens omits the latter claim. None of the poems here appears in the 1780 volume, and vice versa: it seems likely that Translated Specimens was completed and planned for publication first, then delayed, and issued without alteration two years later. Translated Specimens is recorded by ESTC only at the British Library, Bodley & Harvard (Poems with Notes is relatively common).