ABSTRACT
John Forster's only volume of poems was published at London in 1797, and it is fortunate that it went, later in the same year, to a second edition, or the mistranscribed surname of 'Foster' given in the first edition would probably have survived to posterity instead. Of course, posterity has taken little notice of Forster or the many contemporaries who like him were writing conventional, pious verse, published in cheaply produced volumes, and it was charity rather than aesthetic judgement that motivated Forster's patrons and encouragers. A glance at the tides of other poems in Forster's volume gives a flavour of their tone and temper: 'Dangers of Ease and Affluence; or, the Blessedness of Labour and Content', and 'Address to the Sons of Belial' are thoroughly characteristic. It has been found that though he wrote a good hand, he never had more than three or four months school-learning, when he was a little boy.
