Note 1 — VERSES[1] WRITTEN IN DR DARWIN’S BOTANIC GARDEN, Near Lichfield, July, 1778.

These verses were sent to the Gentleman’s Magazine by Dr Darwin, a short time after they had been presented to him by their author, and sent without her knowledge, and with an alteration in the concluding lines; which alteration invokes the nymph of Botany to grace the scene. They are here inscribed as they were originally printed. Fourteen years after, in the spring 1792, the first part of that splendid poem, The Botanic Garden, appeared, which had been some years oddly preceded by the second part of the work. In that first part its author has placed the above verses as the exordium of his poem, with some slight verbal alterations, and with a few brilliant lines of his own interwoven. There is no hint in the notes, or even by a quotation mark, that this poetic landscape was the work of another pen. The circumstance would have been immaterial, if the lines had not appeared in print with the name of their author; but that circumstance rendered that claim necessary. Other periodical publications of that day copied them from the Gentleman’s Magazine.