[Printed keepsake.] Poem by Austin Dobson, titled 'Henry Fielding. Unveiling by the United States Minister, the Hon. J. Russell Lowell, of the Bust in the Shire Hall, Taunton. Sculptor, Miss Margaret Thomas.'

4pp., 12mo. Paginated to 4. Bifolium. In fair condition, on aged and worn paper. On laid paper watermarked 'A PIRIE & SONS | 1883'. Tastefully printed. In Dobson's brightest style, the poem begins: 'Not from the ranks of those we call | Philosopher or Admiral, - | Neither as LOCKE was, nor as BLAKE, | Is that GREAT GENIUS for whose sake | We keep this Autumn festival.' Fielding is praised as 'Our ENGLISH NOVEL's pioneer!', who 'stepped lower down and took | The piebald PEOPLE for his Book!' In what is perhaps the most vivid passage Dobson writes: 'Whose are the characters that give | Such sound reality? - that live | With such full pulse? Fair SOPHY yet | Carols St. George at the spinet; | We see AMELIA cooking still | That supper for the recreant WILL; | We hear Squire WESTON's headlong tones | Bawling "Wut ha? - wut ha?" to JONES. | Are they not present now to us, - | The Parson with his Aeschylus? | SLIPSLOP the frail, and NORTHERTON, | PARTRIDGE, and BATH, and HARRISON? - | Are they not breathing, moving, - all | The motley, merry carnival | That FIELDING kept, in days agone?' Scarce: only three copies on COPAC and OCLC WorldCat (at the British Library, Senate House and Yale).