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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: were burnt the literary and other collections of Lord Mansfield,
the celebrated judge, he who had the courage first to decide that the Slave
who reached the English shore was thenceforward a free man. The loss
of the latter library drew from the poet Cowper two short and weak poems.
The poet first deplores the destruction of the valuable printed books,
and then the irretrievable loss to history by the burning of his Lordship's
many personal manuscripts and contemporary documents.
"Their pages mangled, burnt and torn,
The loss was his alone;
But ages yet to come shall mourn
The burning of his own."
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