"To servants kind, to friendship dear,
To nothing but herself severe;"
and Dryden: "Forgiving others, to himself severe;" and Waller: "The
Muses' friend, unto himself severe." Mitford quotes several other
similar passages.
32. _The sadly pleasing tear_. Rogers cites Dryden's "sadly pleasing
thought" (Virgil's _Æn._ x.); and Mitford compares Thomson's
"lenient, not unpleasing tear."
35. _Gorgon terrors_. Cf. Milton, _P. L._ ii. 611: "Medusa with
Gorgonian terror."
36-40. Cf. _Ode on Eton College_, 55-70 and 81-90.
45-48. Cf. Shakespeare, _As You Like It_, ii. 1:
"these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;"
and Mallet:
"Who hath not known ill-fortune, never knew
Himself, or his own virtue."
Guizot, in his _Cromwell_, says: "The effect of supreme and
irrevocable misfortune is to elevate those souls which it does not
deprive of all virtue;" and Sir Philip Sidney remarks: "A noble
heart, like the sun, showeth its greatest countenance in its lowest
estate."
[Illustration: "Now rolling down the steep amain,
Headlong, impetuous, see it pour;
The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar."
_The Progress of Poesy_, 10.]