Broken rest, tasteless meals, and causeless anxiety, shorten his life, or render it unfit for active employment; prolonged vigils, and intense application still farther contract his span, and make his time glide insensibly away. Let us not then aggravate those natural inconveniencies by neglect; we have had sufficient instances of this kind already. Sale, Savage, Amherst, More, will suffice for one age at least. But they are dead, and their sorrows are over. The neglected author of the Persian eclogues, which, however inaccurate, excel any in our language, is still alive. Happy, if insensible of our neglect, not raging at our ingratitude. It is enough, that the age has already yielded instances of men pressing foremost in the lists of fame, and worthy of better times, schooled by continued adversity into an hatred oftheir
Page:An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe.djvu/157
Appearance