The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

1. Addressed to the clergyman, political theorist, and scientist Joseph Priestley (1733�1804), who at this time was the most distinguished teacher at the Nonconformist Protestant Warrington Academy, where Barbauld's father was also a member of the faculty. The imagined speaker (the petitioning mouse) is destined to participate in just the sort of experiment that led Priestley, a few years later, to the discovery of "phlogiston"�what we now- call oxygen. Tradition has it that when Barbauld showed him the lines, Priestley set the mouse free. According to Barbauid's modern editors, the poem was many times reprinted and was a favorite to assign students for memorizing. The Latin epigraph is from The Aeneid 6.853, "To spare the humbled, and to tame in war the proud."

2. Lines 29�36 p!ay on the idea of transmigration of souls, a doctrine that Priestley believed until the early 1770s.

 .

28 / ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD

Still shifts through matter's varying forms, In every form the same,

Beware, lest in the worm you crush A brother's soul you find; 35 And tremble lest thy luckless hand Dislodge a kindred mind.

Or, if this transient gleam of day Be all of life we share, Let pity plead within thy breast

40 That little all to spare.

So may thy hospitable board With health and peace be crown'd; And every charm of heartfelt ease Beneath thy roof be found.

45 So, when destruction lurks unseen, Which men, like mice, may share, May some kind angel clear thy path, And break the hidden snare.

ca. 1771 1773

An Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestley's Study

A map of every country known,1 With not a foot of land his own. A list of folks that kicked a dust On this poor globe, from Ptol. the First;2

5 He hopes,�indeed it is but fair,� Some day to get a corner there. A group of all the British kings, Fair emblem! on a packthread swings. The Fathers, ranged in goodly row,3

10 A decent, venerable show, Writ a great while ago, they tell us, And many an inch o'ertop their fellows. A Juvenal to hunt for mottos; And Ovid's tales of nymphs and grottos.4

15 The meek-robed lawyers, all in white; Pure as the lamb,�at least, to sight. A shelf of bottles, jar and phial,0 vial By which the rogues he can defy all,� All filled with lightning keen and genuine,

20 And many a little imp he'll pen you in;

1. The maps, historical charts, books, and scien-Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. tific apparatus are all part of the "furniture" (fur-3. The works of the Catholic Church Fathers. nishings) of Joseph Priestley's study (see the first 4. Ovid's Metamorphoses and the works of the note to the preceding poem). Roman satirist Juvenal. 2. Ptolemy I (ca. 367�283 B.C.E.), founder of the

 .

A SUMMER EVENING'S MEDITATION / 29

Which, like Le Sage's sprite, let out, Among the neighbours makes a rout;5 Brings down the lightning on their houses, And lulls their geese, and frights their spouses.

25 A rare thermometer, by which He settles, to the nicest pitch, The just degrees of heat, to raise Sermons, or politics, or plays. Papers and books, a strange mixed olio,

30 From shilling touch0 to pompous folio; cheap pamphlet Answer, remark, reply, rejoinder, Fresh from the mint, all stamped and coined here; Like new-made glass, set by to cool, Before it bears the workman's tool.

35 A blotted proof-sheet, wet from Bowling.6 �"How can a man his anger hold in?"� Forgotten rimes, and college themes, Worm-eaten plans, and embryo schemes;� A mass of heterogeneous matter,

40 A chaos dark, nor land nor water;� New books, like new-born infants, stand, Waiting the printer's clothing hand;� Others, a motley ragged brood, Their limbs unfashioned all, and rude,

45 Like Cadmus' half-formed men appear;7 One rears a helm, one lifts a spear, And feet were lopped and fingers torn Before their fellow limbs were born; A leg began to kick and sprawl

50 Before the head was seen at all, Which quiet as a mushroom lay Till crumbling hillocks gave it way; And all, like controversial writing, Were born with teeth, and sprung up fighting.

55 "But what is this," I hear you cry, "Which saucily provokes my eye?"� A thing unknown, without a name, Born of the air and doomed to flame.

ca.1771 1825

A Summer Evening's Meditation1

Tis past! The sultry tyrant of the south Has spent his short-lived rage; more grateful0 hours pleasing Move silent on; the skies no more repel

5. In Rene LeSage's Le Diable Boiteiix (1707), a (Ovid's Metamorphoses 3.95-114). laboratory-created spirit lifts the roofs from the 1. This poem looks backward to poems such as neighbors' houses, exposing their private lives and William Collins's "Ode to Evening" (1747), Anne creating havoc. Finch's "A Nocturnal Reverie" (1713), and even to 6. Presumably a local printer. Milton's description in book 2 of Paradise Lost of 7. Armed men created when Cadmus sowed the Satan's daring navigation of the realm of Chaos. At earth with the teeth of a dragon he had killed the same time Barbauld's excursion-and-return

 .