Page 419

William Cowper. (1731–1800) (continued)

4507

Praise enough
To fill the ambition of a private man,
That Chatham’s language was his mother tongue.

The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 235.

4508

There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know. 1

The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 285.

4509

Transforms old print
To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes
Of gallery critics by a thousand arts.

The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 363.

4510

Reading what they never wrote,
Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work,
And with a well-bred whisper close the scene.

The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 411.

4511

Whoe’er was edified, themselves were not.

The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 444.

4512

Variety ’s the very spice of life. 2

The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 606.

4513

She that asks
Her dear five hundred friends.

The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 642.

4514

His head,
Not yet by time completely silver’d o’er,
Bespoke him past the bounds of freakish youth,
But strong for service still, and unimpair’d.

The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 702.

4515

Domestic happiness, thou only bliss
Of Paradise that has survived the fall!

The Task. Book iii. The Garden. Line 41.

4516

Great contest follows, and much learned dust.

The Task. Book iii. The Garden. Line 161.

4517

From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up. 3

The Task. Book iii. The Garden. Line 188.

Note 1.
See Dryden, Quotation 95. [back]

Note 2.
No pleasure endures unseasoned by variety.—Publius Syrus: Maxim 406. [back]

Note 3.
He has spent all his life in letting down buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again.—Lady Holland’s Memoir of Sydney Smith, vol. i. p. 259. [back]

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