“THE LIBRARY”, by GEORGE CRABBE
THE ARGUMENT.
Books afford Consolation to the troubled Mind by substituting a lighter kind of Distress for its own - They are productive of other Advantages - An Author’s Hope of being known in distant times - Arrangement of the Library - Size and Form of the Volumes - The ancient Folio, clasped and chained - Fashion prevalent even in this Place - The Mode of publishing in Numbers, Pamphlets &c. - Subjects of the different Classes - Divinity - Controversy - The Friends of Religion often more dangerous than her Foes - Sceptical Authors - Reason too much rejected by the former Converts; exclusively relied upon by the latter - Philosophy ascending through the Scale of Being to Moral Subjects - Books of Medicine: their Variety, Variance, and Proneness to System: the Evil of this, and the Difficulty it causes - Farewell to this Study - Law: the increasing Number of its Volumes - Supposed happy State of Man without Laws - Progress of Society - Historians: their Subjects - Dramatic Authors, Tragic and Comic - Ancient Romances - The Captive Heroine - Happiness in the perusal of such Books: why - Criticism - Apprehensions of the Author: removed by the Appearance of the Genius of the Place; whose Reasoning and Admonition conclude the subject.
When the sad soul, by care and grief oppress’d,
Looks round the world, but looks in vain for rest;
When every object that appears in view
Partakes her gloom and seems dejected too;
Where shall affliction from itself retire?