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CHARLES CHURCHILL. 1731-1764.

He mouths a sentence, as curs mouth a bone.

The Rosciad. Line 322.

But, spite of all the criticising elves,
Those who would make us feel-must feel them-

selves.1

Line 961.

Who to patch up his fame, or fill his purse,
Still pilfers wretched plans, and makes them worse;
Like gypsies, lest the stolen brat be known,
Defacing first, then claiming for his own.2

The Apology. Line 233.

With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroyed by thought.

Epistle to William Hogarth.

Nor waste their sweetness in the desert air.3

Apt alliteration's artful aid.

Gotham. Book ii. Line 20.

The Prophecy of Famine. Line 233. There webs were spread of more than common size, And half-starved spiders preyed on half-starved flies.

Line 327.

Men the most infamous are fond of fame,
And those who fear not guilt, yet start at shame.

Be England what she will,

The Author. Line 86.

With all her faults she is my country still.*

1

Si vis me flere, dolendum est

The Farewell. Line 27.

Primum ipsi tibi. — Horace, Ars Poetica, v. 102.

2 Steal! to be sure they may, and, egad! serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children, — disguise them to make 'em pass for their own. Sheridan, The Critic, Act i. Sc. 1.

3 Compare Gray. Page 329.

4 England, with all thy faults I love thee still.

Cowper, The Task, Book ii. Line 206.

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There was a jolly miller once,

Lived on the river Dee;

He worked and sung from morn till night:

No lark more blithe than he.

And this the burthen of his song

For ever used to be:

I care for nobody, no, not I,

If no one cares for me.1

Young fellows will be young fellows.

Act i. Sc. 2.

Ibid.

Act ii. Sc. 2.

Ay, do despise me. I'm the prouder for it; I like to be despised.

The Hypocrite. Act v. Sc. 1.

RICHARD GIFFORD. 1725-1807.

Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound,
She feels no biting pang the while she sings;

Nor, as she turns the giddy wheel around,2

Revolves the sad vicissitudes of things. Contemplation.

1 If naebody care for me,

I'll care for naebody. - Burns, I hae a Wife o' my Ain.

2 All at her work the village maiden sings,

Nor, while she turns the giddy wheel around.

Compare Sterne. Page 322.

Altered by Johnson.

EDWARD GIBBON. 1737-1794.

History, which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.1 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776). Ch. iii.

Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.

Amiable weaknesses of human nature.2

Cho xi.

Ch. xiv.

In every deed of mischief he had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.3 Ch. xlviii.

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.

Ch. xlix.

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

Ch. lxviii.

Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

Ch. lxxi.

All that is human must retrograde if it do not ad

vance.

Ibid.

On the approach of spring, I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure. Memoir. Vol. i. p. 116.

I was never less alone than when by myself.1

Vol. i. p. 117.

1 L'histoire n'est que le tableau des crimes et des malheurs. Voltaire, L'Ingénu (1767), Ch. x.

2 Compare Fielding. Page 308.

8 Compare Clarendon. Page 168.

Never less alone than when alone. - Rogers, Human Life.

WILLIAM COWPER. 1731-1800.

Is base in kind, and born to be a slave.

Table Talk. Line 28.

As if the world and they were hand and glove. Line 178.

Happiness depends, as Nature shows,
Less on exterior things than most suppose.

No. Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared,
And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard:
To carry nature lengths unknown before,
To give a Milton birth, asked ages more.

Line 246.

Line 260.

Line 556.

Elegant as simplicity, and warm

As ecstasy.

Low ambition and the thirst of praise.

Line 588.

Line 591.

Nature, exerting an unwearied power,

Forms, opens, and gives scent to every flower;
Spreads the fresh verdure of the field, and leads

The dancing Naiads through the dewy meads. Line 690.

How much a dunce that has been sent to roam

Excels a dunce that has been kept at home.

The Progress of Error. Line 415.

Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true,
A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew.

The sounding jargon of the schools.1

1 Compare Prior. Page 241.

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A fool must now and then be right by chance.

Conversation. Line 96.

He would not, with a peremptory tone,
Assert the nose upon his face his own.

Line 121.

A moral, sensible, and well-bred man

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His wit invites you by his looks to come,

But when you knock it never is at home.2

Line 303.

Our wasted oil unprofitably burns,

Like hidden lamps in old sepulchral urns.3

Line 357.

That good diffused may more abundant grow. Line 443.

Absence of occupation is not rest,

A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.

Retirement. Line 623.

An idler is a watch that wants both hands,
As useless if it goes as if it stands.

Built God a church, and laughed his word to scorn.

Line 681.

1 Compare Johnson. Page 315.

2 Compare Pope, Epigram. Page 290.

Line 688.

3 Compare Butler, Hudibras, Part ii. Canto i. Page 218. The story of the lamp which was supposed to have burned about 1,550 years in the sepulchre of Tullia, the daughter of Cicero, is told by Pancirollus and others.

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