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The Essays of Abraham Cowley; With Life by the Editor
The Essays of Abraham Cowley With Life by the Editor Author:Abraham Cowley General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1868 Original Publisher: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston Subjects: Essays History / General Literary Collections / Essays Literary Criticism / Poetry Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illust... more »rations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: III. OF OBSCURITY. " Nam neque divitibus contingunt gaudia solis; " Nee vixit male, qui natus moriensque fefellit."1 God made not pleasures only for the rich; Nor have those men without their share too liv'd, Who both in life and death the world deceiv'd. HIS seems a strange sentence, thus literally translated, and looks as if it were in vindication of the men of business (for who else can deceive the world ?) whereas it is in commendation of those who live and die so obscurely, that the world takes no notice of them. This Horace calls deceiving the world; and in another place uses the same phrase, " Secretum iter et fallentis semita vita!.'" The secret tracks of the deceiving life. It is very elegant in Latin, but our English word will hardly bear up to that sense; and therefore Mr. Broom translates it very well -- Or from a life, led, as it were, by stealth. ' Horace, Ep. I. xvii. 9. 2 Horace, Ep. I. xviii. 103. Yet we say, in our language, a thing deceives our sight, when it passes before us unperceived : and we may say well enough, out of the same author,3 Sometimes with sleep, sometimes with wine, we strive The cares of life and troubles to deceive. But that is not to deceive the world, but to deceive ourselves, as Quintilian says,4 "vitam fallere," to draw on still, and amuse, and deceive our life, till it be advanced insensibly to the fatal period, and fall into that pit which nature hat...« less