Here, while ye lie upon the teeming earth, Altho’ no shell your funeral pomp displays, Far from your grave shall fly the rebel Mirth, And dust and ashes serve instead of _bays_. THOMAS BRAND, From _The British Minerva_, printed in Hamburgh. 1818. ――――:o:―――― ELEGY, _Written in a College Library._ The chapel bell, with hollow mournful sound, Awakes the fellows, slumbering o’er their fires; Roused by the ’custom’d note, each stares around, And sullen from th’ unfinish’d pipe retires. Now from the common hall’s restriction free, The sot’s full bottles in quick order move, While gayer coxcombs sip their amorous tea, And barbers’ daughters soothe with tales of love. Through the still courts a solemn silence reigns, Save where the broken battlements among The east wind murmurs through the shatter’d panes, And hoarser ravens croak their evening song. Where groan yon shelves beneath their learned weight, Heap piled on heap, and row succeeding rows, In peaceful pomp and undisturb’d retreat, The labours of our ancestors repose. No longer sunk in ceaseless, fruitless toil, The half-starved student o’er their leaves shall pore, For them no longer blaze the midnight oil, Their sun is set, and sinks to rise no more! For them no more shall booksellers contend, Or rubric posts their matchless worth proclaim; Beneath their weight no more the press shall bend, While common sense stands wondering at their fame. Oft did the Classics mourn their Critic rage, While still they found each meaning but the true; Oft did they heap with notes poor Ovid’s page, And give to Virgil words he never knew: Yet ere the partial voice of critic scorn Condemn their memory, or their toil deride, Say, have not we had equal cause to mourn A waste of words, and learning ill applied? Can none remember? Yes: I know all can―― When readings against different readings jarr’d, While Bentley led the stern scholastic van, And new editions with the old ones warr’d. Not ye, who lightly o’er each work proceed, Unmindful of the graver moral part, Condemn these works, if, as you run and read, You find no trophies of the engraver’s art. Can Bartolozzi’s all-enrapturing power To heavy works the stamp of merit give? Could Grignion’s art protract oblivion’s hour, Or bid the epic rage of Blackmore live? In this lone nook, with learned dust bestrew’d, Where frequent cobwebs kindly form a shade, Some wondrous legend, fill’d with death and blood, Some monkish history, perhaps, is laid! With store of barbarous Latin at command Though arm’d with puns, and jingling quibble’s mights Yet could not these soothe Time’s remorseless hand Or save their labours from eternal night.