I spent some time over the long weekend leafing around in Eighteenth Century English Literature, an anthology I had to buy in college. It's interesting now partly because the marginalia reveals what made an impression upon me thirty years ago. Maybe people don't change much. The marked passages still seem to me the most notable ones.
There is a section near the end that I looked at for the first time. It's a miscellany of poems by unknown poets. Naturally Dr Leyasmeyer hadn't assigned us to read any such obscure stuff. But I kind of liked this one:
I have lost my mistress, horse, and wife,
And when I think on human life,
Cry mercy 'twas no worse.
My mistress sickly, poor and old,
My wife damn'd ugly, and a scold,
I am sorry for my horse.
The name of the author is lost to literary history.
