Such seem to have been Homer, Horace, Virgil, Montaigne,
Shakspeare, Cervantes. Healthy serene cheerfulness is apparent in
their great creations. Among the same class of cheerful-minded
men may also be mentioned Luther, More, Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci,
Raphael, and Michael Angelo. Perhaps they were happy because
constantly occupied, and in the pleasantest of all work--that of
creating out of the fulness and richness of their great minds.
Milton, too, though a man of many trials and sufferings, must
have been a man of great cheerfulness and elasticity of nature.
Though overtaken by blindness, deserted by friends, and fallen
upon evil days--"darkness before and danger's voice behind"
--yet did he not bate heart or hope, but "still bore up and
steered right onward."
Henry Fielding was a man borne down through life by debt, and
difficulty, and bodily suffering; and yet Lady Mary Wortley
Montague has said of him that, by virtue of his cheerful
disposition, she was persuaded he "had known more happy moments
than any person on earth."
Dr. Johnson, through all his trials and sufferings and hard fights
with fortune, was a courageous and cheerful-natured man. He
manfully made the best of life, and tried to be glad in it. Once,
when a clergyman was complaining of the dulness of society in the
country, saying "they only talk of runts" (young cows), Johnson
felt flattered by the observation of Mrs.
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