ABSTRACT
Here Blackwood’s gleefully pounces on a poetastic volume published anonymously in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1821, Fleurs, a Poem in Four Books. The Fleurs poet describes the environs of Fleurs (now Floors) Castle in the Scottish Borders, painting the most complimentary of pictures. His panegyrical manner is also extended to the owner of the estate, the fifth Duke of Roxburghe, to his lovely and amiable wife and to his handsome and accomplished son. Bathetic salutes are also paid to his aristocratic friend, Lord Buchan, and to that gentleman’s heroes: ‘Socrates, Cicero and Provost Creech’. Praise verses in the eighteenth-century manner addressed to a great nobleman were not yet uncommon in late Georgian society, but few of their authors had the temerity to have their works printed in book-length form. To the delight of the magazine, the Fleurs poet did.
