Now, with a son, the comfort of my age.
Seek not to draw me from this kind retreat,
In loftier spheres unfit, untaught to move;
Content with calm, domestic life, where meet
The smiles of Friendship and the sweets of Love.”
FINIS.
The above is an exact reprint of the very scarce first edition of this parody, which was brought out by the same publisher, and within two years, of Gray’s “Elegy.” It was published in quarto size, and in type and style closely resembled the original “Elegy.”
“An Evening Contemplation in a College” was written by the Rev. John Duncombe, M.A., of Corpus College, Cambridge, who was born in 1730 and died on January 19, 1786. He was the author of several other poems and parodies, neither of which obtained the success of the above, which has been frequently reprinted. It appears at the end of one Dublin edition of Gray’s Poems, in 12mo, 1768, and of another printed by William Sleater in 1775. A pirated quarto edition was published in London by J. Wheble in 1776, and attributed to “An Oxonian,” it was also included in the collection entitled The Oxford Sausage, and in the second volume of The Repository, London, 1777. All these reprints contain numerous verbal alterations from the original.
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