8vo. 7, [1], 163pp, [1]. Contemporary gilt-tooled sprinkled calf, contrasting red morocco lettering-piece. Lightly rubbed, joints starting.

The first edition of the collected poems of Church of England clergyman William Hayward Roberts (bap. 1734, d. 1791), including A Poetical Essay, on the Existence of God, a polemical, and strongly anti-Catholic composition first published separately in 1771. The volume also contains Roberts's epistle to fellow poet Christopher Anstey (1724-1805) on blank verse, which venerates mid-eighteenth-century poets (including Somerville, Akenside, and, almost inevitably, Thomas Gray). In addition to various occasional pieces appears 'Arimant and Tamira: an Eastern Tale, in the Manner of Dryden's Fables', a work of fashionable orientalism, and 'A Poor Man's Prayer', addressed to Pitt the elder in response to the corn shortages of 1766. A second edition was published in 1776.