Page:The Works of Abraham Cowley - volume 1 (ed. Aikin) (1806).djvu/130

10 dice in regard of those more profitable matches, which I might have made among the richer sciences. As for the portion which this brings of fame, it is an estate (if it be any, for men are not oftener deceived in their hopes of widows, than in their opinion of "Exegi monumentum ære perennius") that hardly ever comes in whilst we are living to enjoy it, but is a fantastical kind of reversion to our own selves: neither ought any man to envy poets this posthumous and imaginary happiness, since they find commonly so little in present, that it may be truly applied to them, which St. Paul speaks of the first Christians, "If their reward be in this life, they are of all men the most miserable."

And, if in quiet and flourishing times they meet with so small encouragement, what are they to expect in rough and troubled ones? If wit be such a plant, that it scarce receives heat enough to preserve it alive even in the summer of our cold climate, how can it choose but wither in a long and a sharp winter? A warlike, various, and a tragical age is best to write of, but worst to write in. And I may, though in a very unequal proportion, assume that to myself, which was spoken by Tully to a much better person, upon occasion of the civil wars and revolutions in his time: "Sedin te intuens. Brute, doleo: cujus in adolescen-