Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Plenty
Plenty has made me poor. I could wish that what I am in love with was away.
Ovid.—Meta., Book III. Fable VII. (Riley’s Transl.) But Livy appears to be the originator of the phrase. (Fecit statim ut fit fastidium copia, III. 1, Dr. Ramage.)
Whose plenty made him poor.
Spenser.—Fairy Queen, Book I. Canto IV. Stanza 29.
Scatter plenty o’er a smiling land.
Gray.—Elegy in a Churchyard, Verse 16.
So plenty makes me poor.
Spenser.—Sonnet 35. (Drayton has the same idea.)
And plenty makes us poor.
Dryden.—The Medal, Line 126.