[Page 318]

On the Burning of LORD MANSFIELD'S Library, together with his MSS. by the Mob, in the Month of June, 1780.
[ed.] "On the fifth night of the Gordon Riots, Tuesday, 6 June 1780, the mob attacked the Bloomsbury Square house of William Murray, first Earl of Mansfield (1705–93), Lord Chief Justice from 1756 to 1788. The rioters looted the house, burned its contents on the street, and then set fire to the building itself." (Baird/Ryskamp [1980-95], vol. 1, 411.) (AH)

1.
1 SO then the Vandals of our isle,
2 Sworn foes to sense and law,
3 Have burnt to dust a nobler pile
4 Than ever Roman saw!
2.
5 And MURRAY sighs o'er Pope and Swift,
6 And many a treasure more,
7 The well-judg'd purchase and the gift
8 That grac'd his letter'd store.
3.
9 Their pages mangl'd, burnt and torn,
10 The loss was his alone,
11 But ages yet to come shall mourn
12 The burning of his own.

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Title (in Source Edition): On the Burning of LORD MANSFIELD'S Library, together with his MSS. by the Mob, in the Month of June, 1780.
Themes: poetry; literature; writing; grief; sadness
Genres: eulogy

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Source edition

Cowper, William, 1731-1800. Poems: by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple, Esq. London: printed for J. Johnson, 1782, p. 318. [4],367,[1]p. ; 8⁰. (ESTC T14895; OTA K027775.000) (Page images digitized by the University of California Libraries.)

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The text has been typographically modernized, but without any silent modernization of spelling, capitalization, or punctuation. The source of the text is given and all editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. Based on the electronic text originally produced by the TCP project, this ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 4.0.0.

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