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John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.

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]