Dull treatises, and statutes not a few;
How many a vacant day they’ve pass’d in court;
How many a barren circuit travell’d through.
Yet let not judges mock their useless toil,
And joke at sapient faces no one knows,
Nor ask, with careless and contemptuous smile,
If no one moves in all the long back rows?
Vain is the coif, the ermined robe, the strife
Of courts, and vain is all success e’er gave;
Say, can the judge, whose word gives death or life,