Extra Credit Questions

[Anita]

(05-03-2023 05:53 PM)AussieMick Wrote:  Whoa, Anita. You smacked it out of the ballpark (have I got that right?). Yes, it was a copy of Alexander Pope's poetry.
I was spending some time looking for clues ... Pierian Springs maybe.

https://library.harvard.edu/sites/defaul...er/07.html

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring;"

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast;"

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
― Alexander Pope

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
― Alexander Pope, An Essay On Criticism

Thanks for the question Mick. I enjoyed reading up on Pope. I didn't know he suffered from Pott's disease.

Here's a reference to Lincoln at the Soldier's Home, reading from his volume of Alexander Pope's works to visitor George Borrett. That box of books was quite a treasure Lincoln gave Herndon.

"Herndon told Francis Carpenter that, before leaving for Washington in 1861, Lincoln had sent “to my private residence a box full of his books – mostly political” but including “some valuable literary works—Byron—Goldsmith—Locke—Gibbon &c.”[3] So when the English lawyer George Borrett called on him at the Soldiers’ Home in the summer of 1864, Lincoln not only “launched off into some shrewd remarks about the legal systems of the two countries, and then talked of the landed tenures of England,” but “next turned upon English poetry, the President saying that when we disturbed him he was deep in [Alexander] Pope.”[4]"

https://www.friendsofthelincolncollectio...m-lincoln/