Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 3.djvu/227

Rh cause his faults were very often the effects of his misfortunes.

In this gay period of his life, while he was surrounded by affluence and pleasure, he published The Wanderer, a moral poem, of which the design is comprised in these lines:

I fly all publick care, all venal strife, To try the still, compar'd with active, life; To prove, by these, the sons of men may owe The fruits of bliss to bursting clouds of woe; That ev'n calamity, by thought refin'd, Inspirits and adorns the thinking mind.

And more distinctly in the following passage:

By woe, the soul to daring action swells; By woe, in plaintness patience it excels; From patience, prudent clear experience springs, And traces knowledge thro' the course of things! Thence hope is form'd, thence fortitude, success, Renown:—whate'er men covet and caress.

This performance was always considered by himself as his master-piece; and Mr. Pope, when he asked his opinion of it, told him, that he read it once over, and was not  Rh