The Laurel of Liberty, A Poem. By Robert Merry, A.M. BOUND WITH: The Triumphs of Temper; A Poem. In Six Cantos. By William Hayley, Esq.

The two volumes bound together with the Hayley first. In full newer calf with blind ruled board edges. Spine in six panels with five double gilt-ruled raised bands, and with a red lettering piece in the second compartment from the top with hand stamped lettering neatly done. Binding in near fine condition with some rubbing to the boards. Internally some browning to the edges, with handprint stain to the Merry title-page.

Inspired by Pope’s Rape of the Lock, Hayley’s Triumphs of Temper represents his attempt to raise serio-comic poetry from the level of satire to one where it might “also aspire to delineate the more engaging features of female excellence” (preface). Intended principally for female readers, the poem enjoyed a tremendous success.

Merry’s poem, first published in 1790, is a panegyric to the French Revolution. Merry was the founder of the Della Cruscan school of poetry, characterized by its overblown rhetoric; his Laurel’s turgid similes were gleefully mocked by Walpole. The preface to the Laurel of Liberty attacked complacent members of the elite ‘so charmed by apparent commercial prosperity, that they could view with happy indifference the encroachments of insidious power, and the gradual decay of the Constitution’. He was confident that the ‘progress of Opinion, like a rapid stream, though it may be checked, cannot be controuled’.