The Library

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Title: The Library
Author: George Crabbe
Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5198]
[Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on June 3,
2002]
[Most recently updated: June 3, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE
LIBRARY ***
Transcribed by Mark Sherwood, e-mail
[email protected]

"THE LIBRARY", by GEORGE CRABBE
THE ARGUMENT. {1}
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?
Where fade away and placidly expire?

Alas! we fly to silent scenes in vain;
Care blasts the honours of the
flow'ry plain:
Care veils in clouds the sun's meridian beam,
Sighs
through the grove, and murmurs in the stream;
For when the soul is
labouring in despair,
In vain the body breathes a purer air:
No

storm-tost sailor sighs for slumbering seas,-
He dreads the tempest,
but invokes the breeze;
On the smooth mirror of the deep resides

Reflected woe, and o'er unruffled tides
The ghost of every former
danger glides.
Thus, in the calms of life, we only see
A steadier
image of our misery;
But lively gales and gently clouded skies

Disperse the sad reflections as they rise;
And busy thoughts and little
cares avail
To ease the mind, when rest and reason fail.
When the
dull thought, by no designs employ'd,
Dwells on the past, or suffer'd
or enjoy'd,
We bleed anew in every former grief,
And joys departed
furnish no relief.
Not Hope herself, with all her flattering art,
Can cure this stubborn
sickness of the heart:
The soul disdains each comfort she prepares,

And anxious searches for congenial cares;
Those lenient cares, which
with our own combined,
By mix'd sensations ease th' afflicted mind,

And steal our grief away, and leave their own behind;
A lighter
grief! which feeling hearts endure
Without regret, nor e'en demand a
cure.
But what strange art, what magic can dispose
The troubled mind to
change its native woes?
Or lead us willing from ourselves, to see

Others more wretched, more undone than we?
This BOOKS can
do;--nor this alone; they give
New views to life, and teach us how to
live;
They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise,
Fools they
admonish, and confirm the wise:
Their aid they yield to all: they
never shun
The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone:
Unlike the
hard, the selfish, and the proud,
They fly not sullen from the suppliant
crowd;
Nor tell to various people various things,
But show to
subjects what they show to kings.
Come, Child of Care! to make thy soul serene,
Approach the
treasures of this tranquil scene;
Survey the dome, and, as the doors
unfold,
The soul's best cure, in all her cares, behold!

Where mental
wealth the poor in thought may find,
And mental physic the diseased

in mind;
See here the balms that passion's wounds assuage;
See
coolers here, that damp the fire of rage;
Here alt'ratives, by slow
degrees control
The chronic habits of the sickly soul;
And round the
heart and o'er