CALLIMACHUS.
From no affliction is the poor exempt,
He thinks each eye surveys him with contempt;
Unmanly poverty subdues the heart,
Cankers each wound, and sharpens ev'ry dart. F. LEWIS.
AMONG those who have endeavoured to promote
learning, and rectify judgment, it has
been long customary to complain of the abuse of
words, which are often admitted to signify things so
different, that, instead of assisting the understanding
as vehicles of knowledge, they produce errour,
dissention, and perplexity, because what is affirmed
in one sense, is received in another.
If this ambiguity sometimes embarrasses the most
solemn controversies, and obscures the demonstrations
of science, it may well be expected to infest
the pompous periods of declaimers, whose purpose
is often only to amuse with fallacies, and change the
colours of truth and falsehood; or the musical
compositions of poets, whose style is professedly figurative,
and whose art is imagined to consist in distorting
words from their original meaning.
There are few words of which the reader believes
himself better to know the import, than of POVERTY;
yet, whoever studies either the poets or philosophers,
will find such an account of the condition expressed
by that term as his experience or observation will
not easily discover to be true.
Pages:
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224