Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives by Henry Francis Cary
page 109 of 337 (32%)
page 109 of 337 (32%)
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was allowed to unbend himself in the society of a wife, with whom he
seems always to have lived happily, and of an only daughter, who was growing up to share with her his caresses, and to whom both looked as the future support of their age. [Greek: Tautae, gegaetha, kapilaethomai kakon' Haed anti pollon esti moi parapsychae, Aeolis, tithaenae, baktron, haegemon hodou] In her, rejoicing, I forgot mine ills. I have lost much; but she remains, my comfort, My city and my nurse, my staff and guide. He had bemoaned his distresses as an author; but was now to feel calamity of a different kind. This only daughter was taken from him by death, in her fifteenth year. Henceforward he was, with some short intervals, a prey to querulousness and disease. Soon after this loss (in June, 1763,) being resolved to try what change of climate would do for him, he set out with his disconsolate partner on a journey through France and Italy. On quitting his own country, he describes himself "traduced by malice, persecuted by faction, abandoned by false patrons, and overwhelmed by the sense of a private calamity, which it was not in the power of fortune to repair." The account which he published of this expedition on his return, shews that he did not derive from it the relief which he had expected. The spleen with which he contemplated every object that presented itself to him, was ridiculed by Sterne, who gave him the name of Smelfungus. With this abatement, the narration has much to interest and amuse, and conveys some information by which a traveller might perhaps still profit. When he brings before us the |
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