The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II by Theophilus Cibber
page 52 of 368 (14%)
page 52 of 368 (14%)
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Than palace, and should fitting be
For all my use, no luxury: My garden painted o'er With nature's hand, not art, and pleasures yield, Horace might envy in his Sabine Field. XI. Thus would I double my life's fading space, For he that runs it well, twice runs his race; And in this true delight, These unbought sports, that happy state, I could not fear; nor wish my fate; But boldly say, each night, To-morrow let my sun his beams display, Or in clouds hide them: I have lived to-day. It is remarkable of Mr. Cowley, as he himself tells us, that he had this defect in his memory, that his teachers could never bring him to retain the ordinary rules of grammar, the want of which, however, he abundantly supplied by an intimate acquaintance with the books themselves, from whence those rules had been drawn. In 1636 he was removed to Trinity College in Cambridge, being elected a scholar of that house[2]. His exercises of all kinds were highly applauded, with this peculiar praise, that they were fit, not only for the obscurity of an academical life, but to have made their appearance on the true theatre of the world; and there he laid the designs, and formed the plans of most of the masculine, and excellent attempts he afterwards happily finished. In 1638 he published his Love's Riddle, written at the time of his being a scholar in Westminster school, and dedicated |
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