theme,metaphor,work_id,dictionary,provenance,id,created_at,updated_at,reviewed_on,comments,text,context
"","""While from the bounded level of our mind, / Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind, / But more advanc'd, behold with strange surprize / New distant scenes of endless science rise!""",4151,"",HDIS,10682,2003-11-03 00:00:00 UTC,2009-09-14 19:35:11 UTC,,•Johnson thought this the greatest simile in English poetry. INTEREST.,"Alittle Learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Piërian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir'd at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But more advanc'd, behold with strange surprize
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleas'd at first the tow'ring Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,
Th'eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:
But those attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,
Th'increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!
(II, ll. 215-232)",Part II
"","""As on the land while here the Ocean gains, / In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains; / Thus in the soul while memory prevails, / The solid pow'r of understanding fails; / Where beams of warm imagination play, / The memory's soft figures melt away.""",4151,Optics and Writing,"Reading. Found again in Joseph Warton's An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope (London: Printed for M. Cooper, 1756), 116. Also in James Beattie's Dissertations Moral and Critical (London: Strahan, 1783), 6. See also Ralph Cohen's ""Pope's Meanings and the Strategies of Interrelation,"" English Literature in the Age of Disguise, ed. Maximillian E. Novak, (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1977), 111-12.",10710,2005-07-22 00:00:00 UTC,2017-03-09 18:39:20 UTC,2011-10-20,"•I've included twice: Optics and Liquid
•Cross-reference: appears in Johnson's Dictionary (1755), and in Beattie's Dissertations Moral and Critical (1783).
• Reviewed 2009-01-28.
• Found again in Cohen, Ralph L. ""Pope's Meanings and the Strategies of Interrelation."" English Literature in the Age of Disguise, ed. Maximillian E. Novak, Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1977), 111-12.
• Expanded the entry to take in the whole epic simile (had been focused on beams of imagination before).
• Warton calls the best metaphor on the warmth of fancy
","But you who seek to give and merit fame,
And justly bear a Critic's noble name,
Be sure yourself and your own reach to know,
How far your genius, taste, and learning go;
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.
Nature to all things fix'd the limits fit,
And wisely curb'd proud man's pretending wit.
As on the land while here the Ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid pow'r of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
One science only will one genius fit;
So vast is art, so narrow human wit:
Not only bounded to peculiar arts,
But oft' in those confin'd to single parts.
Like Kings we lose the conquests gain'd before,
By vain ambition still to make them more;
Each might his sev'ral province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand.
(I, ll. 52-67)",Part I