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The Works of Mr. A. Cowley (3); In Prose and Verse
The Works of Mr A Cowley In Prose and Verse - 3 Author:Abraham Cowley Volume: 3 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1809 Original Publisher: John Sharpe Subjects: English poetry History / General Literary Criticism / Poetry Poetry / Anthologies Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations ... more »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: XL OF MYSELF. IT is a hard and nice subject for a man to write of himself; it grates his own heart to say any thing of disparagement, and the reader's ears to hear any thing of praise from him. There is no danger from me of offending him in this kind; neither my mind, nor my body; nor my fortune, allow me any materials for that vanity, It is sufficient for my own contentment, that they have preserved me from her ing scandalous pr remarkable on the defective side. But, besides that, I shall here speak of myself only in relation to the subject of these precedent discourses, and shall be likelier thereby to fall into the contempt, than rise up to the estimation, of most people. As far as my memory can return back into my past )ife, before J knew, or was capable of guessing, what the world or the glories or business of it were, the natural affections of my soul gave me a secret bent of aversion from them, as some plants are said to turn away from others, by an antipathy imperceptible to themselves, and inscrutable to man's understanding. Even when I was a very young boy at school, instead of running about on holy-days and playing with my fellows, I was wontto steal from them, and walk into the fields, either alone with a book, or with some one companion, if I could find any of the same temper. I was then, too, so much an enemy to all constraint, that my masters could never prevail on me, by any persuasions or encouragements, to...« less