The Works of William Cowper, Esq: Comprising His Poems, Corrsepondence, and Translations with a Life of the Author, by the Editor, Robert Southey, Volume 7

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Baldwin and Cradock, 1836
 

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Page 263 - I hope it may thus go through many hands, before it meets with a knave that will stop its progress. This is a trick of mine for doing a deal of good with a little money. I am not rich enough to afford much in good works, and so am obliged to be cunning and make the most of a little.
Page 262 - But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
Page 263 - ... case, when you meet with another honest man in similar distress you must pay me by lending this sum to him ; enjoining him to discharge the debt by a like operation when he shall be able, and shall meet with such another opportunity.
Page 189 - ... resolution to accost him. I did so, and he received me with a complacence in which I saw equal sweetness and dignity. I spoke of his ' Paradise Lost' as every man must who is worthy to speak of it at all, and told him a long story of the manner in which it affected me when I first discovered it, being at that time a schoolboy. He answered me by a smile, and a gentle inclination of his head. He then grasped my hand affectionately, and, with a smile that charmed me, said, ' Well, you for your part...
Page 138 - I have ever seen ; but which, dissipated as my powers of thought are at present, I will not undertake to describe. It shall suffice me to say that they occupy three sides of a hill, which in Buckinghamshire might well pass for a mountain, and from the summit of which is beheld a most magnificent landscape bounded by the sea, and in one part of it by the Isle of Wight, which may also be seen plainly from the window of the library in which I am writing.
Page 61 - Free virtue should enthral to force or chance. Their song was partial, but the harmony (What could it less when spirits immortal sing?) Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment The thronging audience.
Page 88 - I feel the loss of them, and shall feel it, since kinder or more friendly treatment I never can receive at any hands, than I have always found at theirs. But it has long been a foreseen change, and was, indeed, almost daily expected long before it happened. The desertion of the Hall, however, will not be total. The second brother, George, now Mr. Courtenay,* intends to reside there ; and with him, as with his elder brother, I have always been on terms the most agreeable. Such is this variable scene...
Page 277 - The boar's head in hand bear I, Bedeck'd with bays and rosemary; And I pray you, my masters, be merry, Quot estia in convivio. Caput apri defero Reddens laudes Domino.
Page 140 - The inland scene is equally beautiful, consisting of a large and deep valley well cultivated and enclosed by magnificent hills, all crowned with wood. I had for my part no conception that a poet could be the owner of such a Paradise 29.
Page 149 - The genius of that place suits me better, it has an air of snug concealment, in which a disposition like mine feels itself peculiarly gratified ; whereas here I see from every window, woods like forests, and hills like mountains, a wildness, in short, that rather increases my natural melancholy, and which were it not for the agreeables I find within, would soon convince me that mere change of place can avail me little.

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