updated_at,id,text,theme,metaphor,work_id,reviewed_on,provenance,created_at,comments,context,dictionary
2013-10-12 03:56:47 UTC,8539,"In a man's letters, you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.
(II, pp. 14-15 in Thrale)","","""In a man's letters, you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process.""",3278,2009-03-04,"Reading. Discussed in Ian Watt's Rise of the Novel (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957), 191. But see Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook's Epistolary Bodies: Gender and Genre in the Eighteenth-Century Republic of Letters (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996), 86. See also Joe Bray's The Epistolary Novel: Representations of Consciousness (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 8.",2005-03-25 00:00:00 UTC,"•REVISIT. The letter is metaphorized not what's within the breast! INTEREST. A metaphor of mind metaphorized.
•I've included twice: Body and Mirror
•Note, E. Cook thinks Watt has this exactly wrong: ""Johnson is ironically citing an 'idée reçue' here in order to undermine it""
•Was citing p. 519? (of what?)
",To Hester Thrale,Mirror
2009-09-14 19:40:15 UTC,14206,"Father, and Son, and Spirit join'd
In the creating plan,
Each is the Maker of mankind,
And doth His work sustain:
The Spirit breathed His life into
Our animated clay,
And He begets our souls anew,
And seals us to that day.
","","""The Spirit breathed His life into / Our animated clay, / And He begets our souls anew, / And seals us to that day""",5288,,Searching in HDIS (Poetry),2005-04-19 00:00:00 UTC,"",Hymns and Prayers to the Trinity,""
2011-04-30 16:35:44 UTC,18353,"This is an instance of the natural desire of man to propagate a wonder. It is surely very difficult to tell any thing as it was heard, when Sprat could not refrain from amplifying a commodious incident, though the book to which he prefixed his narrative contained its confutation. A memory admitting some things and rejecting others, an intellectual digestion that concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the husks, had the appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provision made by Nature for literary politeness. But in the author's own honest relation, the marvel vanishes: he was, he says, such 'an enemy to all constraint, that his master never could prevail on him to learn the rules without book.' He does not tell that he could not learn the rules, but that, being able to perform his exercises without them, and being an 'enemy to constraint,' he spared himself the labour.","","""A memory admitting some things and rejecting others, an intellectual digestion that concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the husks, had the appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provision made by Nature for literary politeness.""",6836,,Reading,2011-04-30 16:35:44 UTC,"","",""
2011-04-30 16:44:56 UTC,18356,"In his poem on the death of Hervey there is much praise, but little passion, a very just and ample delineation of such virtues as a studious privacy admits, and such intellectual excellence as a mind not yet called forth to action can display. He knew how to distinguish and how to commend the qualities of his companion, but when he wishes to make us weep he forgets to weep himself, and diverts his sorrow by imagining how his crown of bays, if he had it, would crackle in the fire. It is the odd fate of this thought to be worse for being true. The bay-leaf crackles remarkably as it burns; as therefore this property was not assigned it by chance, the mind must be thought sufficiently at ease that could attend to such minuteness of physiology. But the power of Cowley is not so much to move the affections, as to exercise the understanding.","","""But the power of Cowley is not so much to move the affections, as to exercise the understanding.""",6836,,Reading,2011-04-30 16:44:56 UTC,"","",""
2011-04-30 17:01:05 UTC,18361,"The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents itself to the intellectual eye; and if the first appearance offends, a further knowledge is not often sought. Whatever professes to benefit by pleasing must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always surprise. What is perceived by slow degrees may gratify us with the consciousness of improvement, but will never strike with the sense of pleasure.",Mind's Eye,"""The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents itself to the intellectual eye; and if the first appearance offends, a further knowledge is not often sought.""",6836,,Reading,2011-04-30 17:01:05 UTC,"","",""
2013-06-04 17:20:20 UTC,19597,"No passage in the Campaign has been more often mentioned than the simile of the Angel, which is said in the Tatler to be ""one of the noblest thoughts that ever entered into the heart of man,"" and is therefore worthy of attentive consideration. Let it be first enquired whether it be a simile. A poetical simile is the discovery of likeness between two actions, in their general nature dissimilar, or of causes terminating by different operations in some resemblance of effect. But the mention of another like consequence from a like cause, or of a like performance by a like agency, is not a simile, but an exemplification. It is not a simile to say that the Thames waters fields, as the Po waters fields; or that as Hecla vomits flames in Iceland, so Aetna vomits flames in Sicily. When Horace says of Pindar, that he pours his violence and rapidity of verse, as a river swoln with rain rushes from the mountain; or of himself, that his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations, as the bee wanders to collect honey; he, in either case, produces a simile; the mind is impressed with the resemblance of things generally unlike, as unlike as intellect and body. But if Pindar had been described as writing with the copiousness and grandeur of Homer, or Horace had told that he reviewed and finished his own poetry with the same care as Isocrates polished his orations, instead of similitude he would have exhibited almost identity; he would have given the same portraits with different names. In the poem now examined, when the English are represented as gaining a fortified pass, by repetition of attack and perseverance of resolution; their obstinacy of courage, and vigour of onset, is well illustrated by the sea that breaks, with incessant battery, the dikes of Holland. This is a simile; but when Addison, having celebrated the beauty of Marlborough's person, tells us, that ""Achilles thus was formed with every grace,"" here is no simile, but a mere exemplification. A simile may be compared to lines converging at a point, and is more excellent as the lines approach from greater distance; an exemplification may be considered as two parallel lines, which run on together without approximation, never far separated, and never joined.","","""When Horace says of Pindar, that he pours his violence and rapidity of verse, as a river swoln with rain rushes from the mountain; or of himself, that his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations, as the bee wanders to collect honey; he, in either case, produces a simile; the mind is impressed with the resemblance of things generally unlike, as unlike as intellect and body.""",7192,2012-04-18,Reading,2012-02-28 18:06:46 UTC,REVISIT. INTEREST: META-METAPHORICAL. USE somewhere in the book.,"",Beasts