Gibbon, Edward, 1737-1794; Historians -- Great Britain -- Biography
subsistence for herself and her mother; but in her lowest distress
she maintained a spotless reputation, and a dignified behaviour. A
rich banker of Paris, a citizen of Geneva, had the good fortune and
good sense to discover and possess this inestimable treasure; and in
the capital of taste and luxury she resisted the temptations of
wealth, as she had sustained the hardships of indigence. The genius
of her husband has exalted him to the most conspicuous station in
Europe. In every change of prosperity and disgrace he has reclined
on the bosom of a faithful friend; and Mademoiselle Curchod is now
the wife of M. Necker, the minister, and perhaps the legislator, of
the French monarchy.
Whatsoever have been the fruits of my education, they must be
ascribed to the fortunate banishment which placed me at Lausanne. I
have sometimes applied to my own fate the verses of Pindar, which
remind an Olympic champion that his victory was the consequence of
his exile; and that at home, like a domestic fowl, his days might
have rolled away inactive or inglorious.
[Greek omitted]
Thus, like the crested bird of Mars, at home
Engag'd in foul domestic jars,
And wasted with intestine wars,
Inglorious hadst thou spent thy vig'rous bloom;
Had not sedition's civil broils
Expell'd thee from thy native Crete,
And driv'n thee with more glorious toils
Th' Olympic crown in Pisa's plain to meet.
West's Pindar.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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