Pomfret, John. Poems upon Several Occasions, By the Reverend Mr. John Pomfret. London: James Schofield, 1756. Eleventh Edition. [10784]
Full leather binding, 14.8 x 9.5 cm (5 7/8 x 3 3/4 inches), some small white spots on the front board, raised bands & tilt title & panel devices, small wormhole base of spine. Engraved frontispiece and text devices, [i]-vi, [2], [7]-108; separate title page for Remains, [i]-vi, 1-9, 12-12, with last two leaves misnumbered, text is complete; "12" should be page 10, last "12" should be page 14. Short tear top of leaf D6 affecting a few letters; lacks the last free end paper (blank). Good. Hardcover.
Title continues: viz. I. The Choice. II. Love Triumphant over Reason. III. Cruelty and Lust. IV. On the Divine Attributes. V. A Prospect of Death. VI. On the Conflagration, and Last Judgment. The Eleventh Edition, Corrected. With some Account of his Life and Writings. To which are added, His Remains.
Rev. John Pomfret (1667-1702), graduate of Queen's College, Cambridge; rector of Maulden in Bedfordshire (1695). A poet of some significance, he was included in Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets. He was accused of advocating the keeping of a mistress due to some lines of his poem The Choice. The poem won him "instant fame..It is an admirable exposition in neatly turned verse of the everyday epicureanism of a cultivated man. Pomfret is said to have drawn some hints from a study of the character of Sir William Temple...The poet's frankly expressed aspiration to 'have no wife displeased the bishop of London, to whom he had been recommended for preferment. Despite the fact that Pomfret was married, the bishop's suspicions were not dispelled before the poet's death." - DNB (1909).
