32 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCKLAND. 
[CH. II. 
excited the rhyming propensities of his College friend 
Shuttleworth, afterwards Warden of New College, and 
subsequently Bishop of Chichester. The lecture which 
suggested the following lines was probably delivered 
early in 1822. 
“ In Ashmole’s ample dome, with look sedate, 
’Midst heads of mammoths, heads of houses sate ; 
And tutors, close with undergraduates jammed, 
Released from cramming, waiting to be crammed. 
Above, around, in order due displayed, 
The garniture of former worlds was laid: 
Sponges and shells in lias moulds immersed, 
From Deluge fiftieth, back to Deluge first; 
And wedged by boys in artificial stones, 
Huge bones of horses, now called mammoths’ bones; 
Lichens and ferns which schistose beds enwrap, 
And—understood by most professors—trap. 
Before the rest, in contemplative mood, 
With sidelong glance, the inventive Master stood, 
And numbering o’er his class with still delight, 
Longed to possess them cased in stalactite. 
Then thus with smile suppressed: ‘ In days of yore 
One dreary face Earth’s infant planet bore; 
Nor land was there, nor ocean’s lucid flood, 
But, mixed of both, one dark abyss of mud ; 
Till each repelled, repelling by degrees, 
This shrunk to rock, that filtered into seas ; 
Then slow upheaved by subterranean fires, 
Earth’s ponderous crystals shot their prismy spires; 
Then granite rose from out the trackless sea, 
And slate, for boys to scrawl—when boys should be— 
But earth, as yet, lay desolate and bare ; 
Man was not then,—but Paramoudras 1 were. 
’Twas silence all, and solitude ; the sun, 
If sun there were, yet rose and set to none, 
1 Paramoudras: see page 13. 
