“THE PALACE’S SLIMEY WALLS WERE PLAISTER’D O’ER / WITH FAETID EARTH, TEMPER’D WITH HUMANE GORE…”. Large 8vo [19.5 x 12.5 cm]. (20), 28 pp; (4), 29-58 pp; (4), 59-96 pp; (4), 97-130 pp; (4), 131-166 pp, (2), plus engr. frontispiece signed by the Anglo-Dutch artist Michael van Gucht (ca. 1660-1725). Bound in handsome modern paneled, blind-tooled calf à l’antique with gilt title label on spine. A good, crisp copy on large, thick paper; with persistent offsetting of letterpress due to clumsy handling in the printer’s studio, otherwise very good. Rare sole edition of this Miltonic epic in five parts, each of which is dedicated to a different, ‘accomplish’d’ young woman. According to Havens’ bibliography (p. 637), this is the eighth piece of English poetry directly influenced by Paradise Lost; the author indeed anticipates the charge of plagiarism, “for taking some Hints from Milton”; but defends himself by suggesting that “since Dryden hath done the same, and Oldham from Ben Johnson [sic], I am not asham’d of it, nor is it esteem’d a Fault when acknowledged.” The engraved frontispiece depicts the author reclining under a tree, where he is visited by the Angel ‘Tutelar’; together they tour the cosmos – notebook in hand – to observe in rather gory detail all things celestial and hellish (‘The Palace of Death’ covered in human waste, etc.). Says Havens: “The author imagines that he is carried through the Miltonic chaos (where he observes the war of the atoms), past the gates of hell ‘of nine-fold Adamant’ (guarded by Sin, the ‘offspring of Satan’s brain’), to a great palace where the evil spirits are assembled…” (pp. 95-96). But, “Smith at least has the accidental distinction of being one of the first poets in England who made a serious endeavor to reproduce the high moral earnestness and religious spirit of Paradise Lost…. Long passages of the Vision are appropriated bodily from Paradise Lost, with only such modifications as were needed for the rhyme of heroic couplets…”. Foxon suggests that the work was intended to be bound with just one dedication, as in most of the copies recorded in the ESTC. However, the present copy pleasingly preserves all five dedications bound before each of the five parts. These are 1) “The most Accomplish’d young Lady Mrs. Walpole” [Catherine Shorter, later Lady Walpole]; 2) “To the Honourable Mrs. Jandrau”; 3) “To the Right Honourable the Lady Olimpia Roberts”; 4) “To the most Compleat young Lady Mrs. St. John”; 5) “To My Dear Sister Mrs. Harvey”. As noted above, more than half of the copies listed in ESTC seem to be incomplete, having been bound up with just one of the five dedications, or without the frontispiece. ESTC shows US copies at Harvard, Princeton, UCLA, Florida, Illinois, and Yale. The last copy seen at auction made £165 ($300) at Sotheby’s in 1990. * Hazlitt, III (2nd suppl), p. 80; Foxon S526; ESTC T76530; and cf. Havens, The Influence of Milton on English Poetry, Vol I (1922); and Patrides & Wittreich, The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature (1984), p. 263 passim.