Ah! needless now this weight of massy chain; (1) Safe in themselves, the once-loved works remain ; No readers now invade their still retreat,

None try to steal them from their parent-seat;
Like ancient beauties, they may now discard
Chains, bolts, and locks, and lie without a guard.
Our patient fathers trifling themes laid by,
And roll'd, o'er labour'd works, th' attentive eye:
Page after page, the much-enduring men
Explored, the deeps and shallows of the pen ;
Till, every former note and comment known,
They mark'd the spacious margin with their own :
Minute corrections proved their studious care;
The little index, pointing, told us where;
And many an emendation show'd the age
Look'd far beyond the rubric title-page.

Our nicer palates lighter labours seek,
Cloy'd with a folio-Number once a week;
Bibles, with cuts and comments, thus go
down:
E'en light Voltaire is number'd through the town:
Thus physic flies abroad, and thus the law,
From men of study, and from men of straw;
Abstracts, abridgments, please the fickle times,
Pamphlets (2) and plays, and politics and rhymes:

·

(1) In the more ancient libraries, works of value and importance were fastened to their places by a length of chain; and might so be perused, but not taken away.-[" At the view of the Bodleian Library, James the First exclaimed, Were I not a king, I would be an university man; and, if it were so that I must be made a prisoner, I would have no other prison than this library, and be chained together with all these goodly authors!' In this exclamation, the king had in his mind the then prevalent custom of securing books by fastening them to the shelves by chains, long enough to reach to the reading-desks under them."— D'ISRAELI.]

(2) ["From pamphlets may be learned the genius of the age, the debates of the learned, the bévues of government, and mistakes of the

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But though to write be now a task of ease,
The task is hard by manly arts to please,
When all our weakness is exposed to view,
And half our judges are our rivals too.

Amid these works, on which the eager eye
Delights to fix, or glides reluctant by,
When all combined, their decent pomp display,
Where shall we first our early offering pay? -

To thee, DIVINITY! to thee, the light And guide of mortals, through their mental night; By whom we learn our hopes and fears to guide; To bear with pain, and to contend with pride; When grieved, to pray; when injured, to forgive; And with the world in charity to live. (1)

courtiers. Pamphlets furnish beaus with their airs; coquettes with their charms. Pamphlets are as modish ornaments to gentlewomen's toilets, as to gentlemen's pockets: they carry reputation of wit and learning to all that make them their companions; the poor find their account in stall-keeping and hawking them; the rich find in them their shortest way to the secrets of church and state. In short, with pamphlets, the booksellers adorn the gaiety of shop-gazing. Hence accrues to grocers, apothecaries, and chandlers, good furniture, and supplies to necessary retreats. In pamphlets, lawyers meet with their chicanery, physicians with their cant, divines with their shibboleth. Pamphlets become more and more daily amusements to the curious, idle, and inquisitive; pastime to gallants and coquettes; chat to the talkative; catch-words to informers; fuel to the envious; poison to the unfortunate; balsam to the wounded; employ. ment to the lazy; and fabulous materials to romancers and novelists.". MYLES DAVIES; Icon Libellorum, 1715.]

(1) [" It is not the reading many books which makes a man a divine, but the reading a few of the best books often over, and with attention: those, at least, who are beginning their theological studies should follow this rule."- BISHOP WATSON.

"If the reader is disposed to attend to the humble suggestions of a very private layman, I think he would find great advantage in studying and considering the following works, in the order in which they are

Not truths like these inspired that numerous race, Whose pious labours fill this ample space; But questions nice, where doubt on doubt arose, Awaked to war the long-contending foes. For dubious meanings, learn'd polemics strove, And wars on faith prevented works of love; The brands of discord far around were hurl'd, And holy wrath inflamed a sinful world : Dull though impatient, peevish though devout, With wit disgusting, and despised without; Saints in design, in execution men,

Peace in their looks, and vengeance in their pen. (')
Methinks I see, and sicken at the sight,

Spirits of spleen from yonder pile alight;
Spirits who prompted every damning page,
With pontiff pride and still-increasing rage:

arranged: -1. The View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion, by Soame Jenyns. 2. The Evidences of Christianity, by Dr. Paley. 3. Grotius on the Truth of the Christian Religion. 4. Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, by Dr. Samuel Clarke. 5. Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity. 6. Bishop Hurd's Introduction to the Study of the Prophecies. 7. Lord Lyttelton's Dissertation on the Conversion of St. Paul; and, 8. Dr. Butler's Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature. From these few volumes, if they are studied with care and an upright intention, I think it may be said, that They shall see to whom He was not (before) spoken of; and they that have not (before) heard, shall understand.""— MATTHIAS.]

(1) ["The history of the scholastic philosophy, might furnish a philosophical writer with an instructive theme; it would enter into the history of the human mind, and fill a niche in our literary annals; the works of the scholastics, with the controversies of these Quodlibetinars, would at once testify all the greatness and the littleness of the human intellect. Of these scholastic divines, the most illustrious was Saint Thomas Aquinas, styled the angelical doctor. Seventeen folio volumes not only testify his industry, but even his genius. He was a great man busied all his life with making a charade of metaphysics. His 'Sum of all Theology,' a metaphysicological treatise, occupies above 1250 folio pages, of very close print in double columns."— D'ISRAELI.]

Lo! how they stretch their gloomy wings around,
And lash with furious strokes the trembling ground!
They pray, they fight, they murder, and they weep,-
Wolves in their vengeance, in their manners sheep;
Too well they act the prophet's fatal part,
Denouncing evil with a zealous heart;
And each, like Jonah, is displeased if God
Repent his anger, or withhold his rod. (1)
But here the dormant fury rests unsought,
And Zeal sleeps soundly by the foes she fought;
Here all the rage of controversy ends,

And rival zealots rest like bosom-friends:
An Athanasian here, in deep repose,
Sleeps with the fiercest of his Arian foes;
Socinians here with Calvinists abide,
And thin partitions angry chiefs divide;
Here wily Jesuits simple Quakers meet,
And Bellarmine has rest at Luther's feet. (2)
Great authors, for the church's glory fired,
Are, for the church's peace, to rest retired;
And close beside, a mystic, maudlin race,
Lie "Crumbs of Comfort for the Babes of Grace."(*)

(1) ["And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry." - Jonah, iii. 10.]

(2) [Original MS. :—

Calvin grows gentle in this silent coast,

Nor finds a single heretic to roast;

Here, their fierce rage subdued, and lost their pride,
The Pope and Luther slumber side by side.]

(3) ["How peaceably they stand together: Papists and Protestants side by side! Their very dust reposes not more quietly in the cemetery. Ancient and modern, Jew and Gentile, Mahommedan and Crusader, French and English, Spaniards and Portuguese, Dutch and Brazilians, fighting

Against her foes Religion well defends

Her sacred truths, but often fears her friends;

If learn'd, their pride, if weak, their zeal she dreads,
And their hearts' weakness, who have soundest heads:
But most she fears the controversial pen,
The holy strife of disputatious men ; (')
Who the blest Gospel's peaceful page explore,
Only to fight against its precepts more. (2)

Near to these seats, behold yon slender frames,
All closely fill'd and mark'd with modern names;
Where no fair science ever shows her face,
Few sparks of genius, and no spark of grace;
There sceptics rest, a still-increasing throng,
And stretch their widening wings ten thousand strong;
Some in close fight their dubious claims maintain;
Some skirmish lightly, fly and fight again;
Coldly profane, and impiously gay,

Their end the same, though various in their way.
When first Religion came to bless the land,
Her friends were then a firm believing band;

their old battles, silently now, upon the same shelf: Fernam Lopez and Pedro de Ayala; John de Laet and Barlæus, with the historians of Joam Fernandez Viera; Fox's Martyrs and the Three Conversions of Father Parsons; Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner; Dominican and Franciscan; Jesuit and Philosophe; Churchmen and Sectarians; Roundheads and Cavaliers!"-SOUTHEY.]

(1) ["Your whole school is nothing but a stinking sty of pigs. Dog! do you understand me? Do you understand me, madman? Do you understand me, you great beast?"-CALVIN to LUTHER.]

(2) [" These controversial divines have changed the rule of life into a standard of disputation. They have employed the temple of the Most High as a fencing-school, where gymnastic exercises are daily exhibited, and where victory serves only to excite new contests: slighting the bulwarks wherewith He who bestowed religion on mankind had secured it, they have encompassed it with various minute outworks, which an army of warriors can with difficulty defend." — SIR D. DALRYMPLE,