#historical literature

Elizabeth Carter as Minerva by John Fayram 1735-1741. Height: 90 cm (35.4 in); Width: 69 cm (27.1 in). National Portrait Gallery, London. Elizabeth Carter was the first person to translate the whole of Epictetus into English.

“Ode to Wisdom:

The solitary bird of night

Through the thick shades now wings his flight,

And quits his time-shook tow'r;

Where shelter’d from the blaze of day,

In philosophic gloom he lay,

Beneath his ivy bow'r.

With joy I hear the solemn sound,

Which midnight echoes waft around,

And sighing gales repeat.

Fav'rite of Pallas! I attend,

And, faithful to thy summons, bend

At Wisdom’s awful seat.

She loves the cool, the silent eve,

Where no false shews of life deceive,

Beneath the lunar ray.

Here folly drops each vain disguise,

Nor sport her gaily-colour’d dyes,

As in the beam of day.

O Pallas! queen of ev'ry art,

That glads the sense, and mends the heart,

Blest source of purer joys:

In every form of beauty bright

That captivates the mental fight

With pleasure and surprize:

At thy unspotted shrine I bow:

Attend thy modest suppliant’s vow,

That breathes no wild desires:

But taught by thy unerring rules,

To shun the fruitless wish of fools.

To nobler views of aspires.

Not fortune’s gem, ambition’s plume,

Nor Cytherea’s fading bloom,

Be objects of my pray'r:

Let av'rice, vanity, and pride,

Those envy’d glitt'ring toys divide,

The dull rewards of care.

To me thy better gifts impart,

Each moral beauty of the heart,

By studious thoughts refin’d;

For wealth, the smiles of glad content,

For pow'r, its amplest, best extent,

An empire o'er the mind.”

-Elizabeth Carter, Poems by the most eminent ladies of Great Britain and Ireland. Page 48-50.

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