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4to (251 x 203 mm), pp. 31, [1 (blank)]; very small crease at bottom corner of first leaf, very light foxing along fold line on p. [1]; stitched as issued, folded once; a very fresh, crisp, uncut copy; contemporary presentation inscription on title 'Count Rumford from Mrs Barlow', manuscript corrections to pp. 24 and 28 in the same hand (see below).First edition, one of 500 copies, of this eulogy to the poet and diplomat Joel Barlow a friend of Jefferson, Madison, Blake, and Paine an association copy gifted by his widow, Ruth Barlow (née Baldwin) to the physicist and inventor Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, with her manuscript corrections to an extract from her husband's work. Barlow (1754-1812) studied at Yale, where he developed interests in poetry, moral and political philosophy, and science. In 1788, as the representative of a short-lived business group that tried to sell Ohio lands to Europeans, Barlow travelled to England and France, and met 'many of the most influential people […] including Thomas Paine, who became a lifelong friend, William Blake, Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, Mary Wollstonecraft, the marquis the Lafayette, and Brissot de Warville' (ANB). Barlow would stay abroad for seventeen years (one of the few Americans in France at the time), working as a journalist and poet on social and political themes, and propagandist (against monarchic tyranny and for peaceful revolution) amidst and following the French Revolution. Having returned to America in 1805, he was later sent abroad once more, chasing a treaty with Napoleon on behalf of President Madison, and died of pneumonia in Poland in 1812. The present Notice comprises a eulogy on Barlow followed by an introduction to and the first 141 lines of the Columbiad, the 1807 reworking and expansion of his epic Vision of Columbus (1788), with a parallel French translation. Dupont de Nemours sent manuscript copies of the Notice to both James Madison and Thomas Jefferson in February 1813; Madison had appointed Barlow minister plenipotentiary to France, and Jefferson had collaborated with Barlow on a plan to establish an American national university in Washington, D.C. (now George Washington University). Our copy is inscribed 'Count Rumford from Mrs Barlow'; Barlow's widow, Ruth, has added corrections in manuscript to pp. 24 and 28 of the English text of the Columbiad. With Ruth, Barlow had formed a 'tie far more interesting to his heart' than his 'friendship[s] of the highest public characters in the nation, both civil and military' (contemporary translation of the draft Notice), and they had married in secret. Count Rumford, the Massachusetts-born loyalist Benjamin Thompson (1753 1814), noted for his contributions in the field of thermodynamics and for his involvement in the foundation of the Royal Institution, had been forced into exile after the American Revolution and was considered, together with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, 'the greatest mind America has produced' by Franklin D. Roosevelt (Brown, Scientist, Soldier, Statesman, Spy: Count Rumford (1999), p. 160). Barlow first met Rumford in London on 14 June 1802, while making a brief visit to the city, as he wrote to his friend Robert Fulton (inventor of the steamboat): 'I met Count Rumford and he and I were friends in a moment. He told me a great many things new and good, and all the particulars about the Royal Institution. I complimented him liberally and handsomely' (Todd ed., The Life and Letters of Joel Barlow (1886), p. 190). Barbier 12423 (ascribing the work to Oelsner alone); Sabin 21390. Language: French. Seller Inventory # T3939
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