The Brighthelmstone Directory or Sketches in Miniature of the British Shore

London, Printed for T. Durham..., 1770. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. Small 8vo, 175 110 mms. pp. [iv], viii, 76, recent marbled wrappers. The Critical Review produced a review with a comment much shorter than the quoted text: "These Sketches are formed upon the mode of the New Bath Guide, and wrote in the hendecasyllable measure. The author informs us that they were attended only for the amusement of a friend, for which we very readily give him credit, and join with him in opinion where he says, 'That the only reputation I expect to acquire by this publication, is, that of a faithful historian; and yet I am afraid it will be lost in a few years. Some of the facts I relate will, perhaps, appear to our virtuous grand-daughters, so void of probability, that my whole correspondence runs a risk of being deemed fictitious....'" The Monthly Review was terse and trenchant: "In proportion as we applaud the very agreeable and entertaining Bath guide, we cannot but commiserate his unhappy mistaken imitator, the Author of the new Brighthelmstone Directory." The verse form that the first reviewer refers to was known in the 18th century as "Anstey Measure" or "Bath Guide measure." And compare the comment in The Monthly Review when The New Bath Guide was published in 1766: "There are a thousand strains of humour in these high-wrought Epistles." The work has been attributed to Edward Johnson. See Martin S. Day, "Anstey and Anapestic Satire in the Late Eighteenth Century," ELH (1948) ESTC T59226 locates copies in BL, Brighton Central, Cambridge, Bodleian (2); Yale, Huntington, Newberry (2); McMaster