Page:Essays - Abraham Cowley (1886).djvu/122

 If e'er ambition did my fancy cheat, With any wish so mean as to be great, Continue, Heaven, still from me to remove The humble blessings of that life I love. I know very many men will despise, and some pity me, for this humour, as a poor-spirited fellow; but I am content, and, like Horace, thank God for being so. Dii bene fecerunt inopis me, quodque pusilli finxerunt animi. I confess I love littleness almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a very little feast; and if I were ever to fall in love again (which is a great passion, and therefore I hope I have done with it) it would be, I think, with prettiness rather than with majestical beauty. I would neither wish that my mistress, nor my fortune, should be a bona roba, nor, as Homer used to describe his beauties, like a daughter of great Jupiter, for the stateliness and largeness of her person, but, as Lucretius says, "Parvula, pumilio,, tota merum sal."

Where there is one man of this, I believe there