One of the most humorously wise extended works of English literature devoted entirely to the subject of libraries is a long poem written in accomplished rhyming couplets by George Crabbe (1754-1832). Completed sometime in the 1780s, ‘The Library’ describes in loving detail the kind of book collections, whether public, university or private, that had emerged during the Enlightenment in England. The poem is equally attentive to the human desires that make libraries possible, whether those of the writer, the collector, or the reader. Halfway through the poem, we are taken on a guided tour of the sections.
Amid these works, on which the eager eye
Delights to fix, or glides reluctant by,
When all combined, their decent pomp display,
Where shall we first our early offering pay?
To thee, DIVINITY! to thee, the light
And guide of mortals, through their mental night;
By whom we learn our hopes and fears to guide;
To bear with pain, and to contend with pride;
When grieved, to pray; when injured, to forgive;
And with the world in charity to live.
Having established some of the main
purposes of Gospel living, Crabbe was himself a clergyman, he then turns to
study some of the authors of theology.
Not truths like these inspired that numerous race,
Whose pious labours fill this ample space;
But questions nice, where doubt on doubt arose,
Awaked to war the long-contending foes.
For dubious meanings, learned polemics strove,
And wars on faith prevented works of love;
The brands of discord far around were hurl'd,
And holy wrath inflamed a sinful world:-
Dull though impatient, peevish though devout,
With wit disgusting, and despised without;
Saints in design, in execution men,
Peace in their looks, and vengeance in their pen.
Methinks I see, and sicken at the sight,
Spirits of spleen from yonder pile alight;
Spirits who prompted every damning page,
With pontiff pride and still-increasing rage:
Lo! how they stretch their gloomy wings around,
And lash with furious strokes the trembling ground!
They pray, they fight, they murder, and they weep,-
Wolves in their vengeance, in their manners sheep;
Too well they act the prophet's fatal part,
Denouncing evil with a zealous heart;
And each, like Jonah, is displeased if God
Repent his anger, or withhold his rod.
The fearsome battles of rival
theologians are recalled to mind, together with the actual physical battles
between nation states tied to these disputes. Crabbe has learnt his church
history well, spelling out in verse the common arguments of the Age of Reason
in its visceral reaction to the previous Age of the (so-called) Wars of Religion.
The role of the library in all of this total recall is another matter.
But here the dormant fury rests unsought,
And Zeal sleeps soundly by the foes she fought;
Here all the rage of controversy ends,
And rival zealots rest like bosom-friends:
An Athanasian here, in deep repose,
Sleeps with the fiercest of his Arian foes;
Socinians here with Calvinists abide,
And thin partitions angry chiefs divide;
Here wily Jesuits simple Quakers meet,
And Bellarmine has rest at Luther's feet.
Great authors, for the church's glory fired,
Are for the church's peace to rest retired;
And close beside, a mystic, maudlin race,
Lie 'Crumbs of Comfort for the Babes of Grace.'
Against her foes Religion well defends
Her sacred truths, but often fears her friends:
If learn'd, their pride, if weak, their zeal she dreads,
And their hearts' weakness, who have soundest heads.
George Crabbe’s image of slumbering
polemicists is justly famous in certain religious circles. He compresses the different
parties into order, precisely as a library does in making a seeming uniformity
of all the generations of Christian apologetic and counterclaims. Indeed,
libraries at this time awakened in visitors the perception that clashing
viewpoints could be reduced to wars with words, an awareness that informs post-modern
thinking about everything in discourse being no more than language games.
However, while a visitor to the library may observe how the shelves represent
all the differences of church history, this doesn’t mean that rest is now eternal.
Crabbe’s own Age would seem to be typical of all the others in its need to
argue and create division.
But most she fears the controversial pen,
The holy strife of disputatious men;
Who the blest Gospel's peaceful page explore,
Only to fight against its precepts more.
Near to these seats behold yon slender frames,
All closely fill'd and mark'd with modern names;
Where no fair science ever shows her face,
Few sparks of genius, and no spark of grace;
There sceptics rest, a still-increasing throng,
And stretch their widening wings ten thousand strong;
Some in close fight their dubious claims maintain;
Some skirmish lightly, fly, and fight again;
Coldly profane, and impiously gay,
Their end the same, though various in their way.
The poet refrains from naming these
modern Athanasius’s and Bellarmines, but more than hints at the familiar
attitudes that have earned their books a place in Divinity. The subject itself
remains constant, only the areas of dispute change. The new religion of Reason
is trending in the decade of the French Revolution, something that Crabbe is
intensely aware of, and that prompts a philosophical question in light of his
own expressed vision of words through time.
When first Religion came to bless the land,
Her friends were then a firm believing band;
To doubt was then to plunge in guilt extreme,
And all was gospel that a monk could dream;
Insulted Reason fled the grov'lling soul,
For Fear to guide, and visions to control:
But now, when Reason has assumed her throne,
She, in her turn, demands to reign alone;
Rejecting all that lies beyond her view,
And, being judge, will be a witness too:
Insulted Faith then leaves the doubtful mind,
To seek for truth, without a power to find:
Ah! when will both in friendly beams unite,
And pour on erring man resistless light?