When it was impossible to prevent our reading something, the fear of the progress of knowledge and a Reading Public … made the Church and State … anxious to provide us with that sort of food for our stomachs, which they thought best.

The panes obscur'd by half a century's smoke:

There stands the bench at which his life is spent,

Worn, groov'd, and bor'd, and worm devour'd, and bent,

Where daily, undisturb'd by foes or friends,

In one unvaried attitude he bends …

Such is his fate – and yet you might descry

A latent spark of meaning in his eye.

– That crowded shelf, beside his bench, contains

One old, worn, volume that employs his brains:

With algebraic lore its page is spread,

where a and b contend with x and z:

Sold by some student from an Oxford hall,

– Bought by the pound upon a broker's stall.

On this it is his sole delight to pore,

Early and late, when working time is o'er:

But oft he stops, bewilder'd and perplex'd,

At some hard problem in the learned text;

Pressing his hand upon his puzzled brain,

At what the dullest school-boy could explain.

From needful sleep the precious hour he saves,

To give his thirsty mind the stream it craves:

There, with his slender rush beside him plac'd,

He drinks the knowledge in with greedy haste.