48 



in any thing but doing my duty.''* In his devout and mag- 

 nificent Essay on the Sun, he says, " 'tis admirable that this 

 planet should, through so many ages of the world, maintain 

 an uninterrupted course, that in so many thousands of re- 

 volving years, it should retain the same light, heat, and 

 vigour, and every morning renew its wonted alacrity, and 

 dart its cherishing beams on these dull and gloomy scenes of 

 melancholy and misery, and yet that so few of us rightly 

 consider its power, or are thankful to Divine Omnipotence 

 for it. The great Roscommon (not greater than good) speaks 

 of it with divine transport, and exhorts mankind to admire 

 it, from the benefits and celestial beams it displays on the 

 world : 



Great eye of all, whose glorious ray 



Rules the bright empire of the day; 



O praise his name, without whose purer light 



Thou hadst heen hid in an abyss of night, "f 



Switzer (as appears from the Preface to his Iconologia) 

 was so struck with the business and pleasures of a country 

 life, that he collected, or meant to collect, whatever he could 

 respecting this subject, scattered up and down as they were 

 in loose irregular papers and books; but this work, we regret 

 to say, never made its appearance. That he would have 

 done this well, may be guessed at from so many of his pages 



* What these ruffles and lashes were, I know not. Perhaps the words of 

 Johnson may apply to them: 



Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart, 

 Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart. 

 This mournful truth is every where confess 'd, 

 Slow rises worth, by poverty oppress'd. 



f Barnaby Gooche, in his Chapter on Gardens, calls the sun "the cap- 

 taine and authour of the other 1'ghts, tJie very soule of the tuorld." 



