Page:Essays - Abraham Cowley (1886).djvu/58

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OF OBSCURITY.

Nam neque divitibus contingunt gaudia solis,
Nec vixit male, qui natus moriensque fefellit.

God made not pleasures only for the rich,
Nor have those men without their share too lived,
Who both in life and death the world deceived.

This seems a strange sentence thus literally translated, and looks as if it were in vindication of the men of business (for who else can deceive the world?) whereas it is in commendation of those who live and die so obscurely, that the world takes no notice of them. This Horace calls deceiving the world, and in another place uses the same phrase.

Secretum iter et fallentis semita vitæ.
The secret tracks of the deceiving life.

It is very elegant in Latin, but our English