* * * *

JAMES BEATTIE.
1735-1766.

_The Minstrel_. Book i. St. 1.

Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar?

* * * * *

_The Hermit_. Line 8.
He thought as a sage, but he felt as a man.

* * * * *

_Epigram_. _The Bucks had dined_.

How hard their lot who neither won nor lost.

CHARLES CHURCHILL.
1741-1764.

_The Rosciad_. Line 861.

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

* * * * *

MRS. THEALE.
1740-1822.

_Three Warnings_.

The tree of deepest root is found
Least willing still to quit the ground;
'Twas therefore said, by ancient sages,
That love of life increased with years
So much, that in our latter stages,
When pains grow sharp, and sickness rages,
The greatest love of life appears.

* * * * *

WILLIAM COWPER.
1731-1800.

THE TASK.

Book i. _The Sofa_.

God made the county, and man made the town.[20]

[Note 20: "God the first garden made, and the first city Cain."--Cowley]

Book ii. _The Timepiece_.

O for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumor of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never roach me more.

* * * * *

Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

Variety's the very spice of life,
That gives it all its flavor.

* * * * *

Book iii. _The Garden_.

Domestic Happiness, thou only bliss
Of Paradise that hast survived the fall!

How various his employments whom the world
jails idle; and who justly in return
Esteems that busy world an idler too!

* * * * *

Book iv. _Winter Evening_.

And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cup