To this I shall add the famous apothegm at the close of the following stanzas, in his Ode On a Prospect of Eton College: "Yet, ah!
But the source of Gray's apothegm is still more obviously traceable to these lines in Prior: "Seeing aright we see our woes; Then what avails us to have eyes?
This apothegm contains in it the whole of what I would say on the subject of amusements.
These words arrested my thoughts at once, as, by a singular chance, they seemed to fit my mood; was it or was it not some conscious invisible intelligence that caused me to select that page, and brought the apothegm to my notice?
