"The Muses led them up to Mount Parnassus, / And that's the reason that they all surpass us."

I'd only met the Prospectus and Specimen of an Intended Rational Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stow-Market, in Suffolk, Harness and Collar-Makers, Intended to Comprise the Most Interesting Particulars Relating to King Arthur and his Round Table by John Hookham Frere in anthology extracts, but I've always been interested in more. Most especially because apparently it is deemed the only reason to curate even snippets is because of its influence on Byron, exposing him the manner (borrowed from Pulci and Ariosto) that he used himself in Beppo and perfected into Don Juan -- and to all of us influenced by that.

That "apparently" makes me sad, as despite what you might expect from the title, the humor is nothing at all grinding -- it is breezy light-verse narration that pulls the reader on quite nicely, amid its digressions and fourth-wall breakage and other meta-notions. It is, indeed, better at this than Beppo, though Don Juan is better still -- on the order of The Vision of Judgment, roughly, though with far less barb in its sting. It could have been written any time, I think, up to the Great War, but for a few details of local color.

I am very glad to have tracked it down. And not just because I can learn things from it.

---L.