WILLIAM COWPER
Born in 1731, died in 1800; son of a clergyman; educated at Westminster School; admitted to the bar in 1754, but melancholia unfitted him for practise; temporarily confined in an asylum in 1763; afterward lived in private families, being subject to repeated attacks of mental disorder tending to suicide, ending in permanent insanity; published "The Task" in 1785, a translation of Homer in 1791.
I
OF KEEPING ONE'S SELF EMPLOYED[58]
I have neither long visits to pay nor to receive, nor ladies to spend hours in telling me that which might be told in five minutes; yet often find myself obliged to be an economist of time, and to make the most of a short opportunity. Let our station be as retired as it may, there is no want of playthings and avocations, nor much need to seek them, in this world of ours. Business, or what presents itself to us under that imposing character, will find us out even in the stillest retreat, and plead its importance, however trivial in reality, as a just demand upon our attention.
It is wonderful how by means of such real or seeming necessities my time is stolen away. I have just time to observe that time is short, and by the time I have made the observation time is gone.
I have wondered in former days at the patience of the antediluvian world, that they could endure a life almost millenary, and with so little variety as seems to have fallen to their share. It is probable that they had much fewer employments than we. Their affairs lay in a narrower compass; their libraries were indifferently furnished; philosophical researches were carried on with much less industry and acuteness of penetration, and fiddles perhaps were not even invented. How then could seven or eight hundred years of life be supported? I have asked this question formerly, and been at a loss to resolve it; but I think I can answer it now. I will suppose myself born a thousand years before Noah was born or thought of. I rise with the sun; I worship; I prepare my breakfast; I swallow a bucket of goat's milk and a dozen good sizable cakes. I fasten a new string to my bow, and my youngest boy, a lad of about thirty years of age, having played with my arrows till he has stript off all the feathers, I find myself obliged to repair them. The morning is thus spent in preparing for the chase, and it is become necessary that I should dine. I dig up my roots; I wash them; boil them; I find them not done enough, I boil them again; my wife is angry; we dispute; we settle the point; but in the mean time the fire goes out, and must be kindled again. All this is very amusing.