work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
7575,"",Reading,2013-07-25 16:13:41 UTC,"To distinguish between correctness of drawing, and that part which respects the imagination, we may say the one approaches to the mechanical (which in its way too may make just pretensions to genius) and the other to the poetical. To encourage a solid and vigorous course of study, it may not be amiss to suggest that perhaps a confidence in the mechanic produces boldness in the poetic. He that is sure of the goodness of his ship and tackle puts out fearlesly from the shore; and he who knows, that his hand can execute whatever his fancy can suggest, sports with more freedom in embodying the visionary forms of his own creation. I will not say Michael Angelo was eminently poetical, only because he was greatly mechanical; but I am sure that mechanic excellence invigorated and emboldened his mind to carry Painting into the regions of Poetry, and to emulate that Art in its most adventurous flights.
(pp. 14-15)",,22076,"","""But I am sure that mechanic excellence invigorated and emboldened his mind to carry Painting into the regions of Poetry, and to emulate that Art in its most adventurous flights.""","",2013-07-25 16:13:41 UTC,""
7879,"",ECCO-TCP,2014-04-29 20:51:11 UTC,"It is curious to observe the first dawn of genius breaking on the mind. Sometimes a man of genius, in his first effusions, is so far from revealing his future powers, that, on the contrary, no reasonable hope can be formed of his success. In the violent struggle of his mind, he may give a wrong direction to his talents; as Swift, in two pindaric odes, which have been unfortunately preserved in his works. Sometimes a man of genius displays no talents, even among those who are able to decide on them; his genius, like Aeneas, is veiled by a cloud, and remains unperceived by his associates. This was the case of Goldsmith; who was so far from displaying a fine genius, that even his literary companions, before the publication of his beautiful poems, regarded him as a compiler for the Booksellers, not as a writer for men of taste. Sometimes, when a writer displays an early genuis, it is not expressed with all its force. Several have began versifiers, and concluded poets; and perhaps this is no unjust idea of Pope.
(pp. 32-3)",,23834,"","""It is curious to observe the first dawn of genius breaking on the mind. Sometimes a man of genius, in his first effusions, is so far from revealing his future powers, that, on the contrary, no reasonable hope can be formed of his success.""","",2014-04-29 20:51:11 UTC,""
7879,"",ECCO-TCP,2014-04-29 20:51:49 UTC,"It is curious to observe the first dawn of genius breaking on the mind. Sometimes a man of genius, in his first effusions, is so far from revealing his future powers, that, on the contrary, no reasonable hope can be formed of his success. In the violent struggle of his mind, he may give a wrong direction to his talents; as Swift, in two pindaric odes, which have been unfortunately preserved in his works. Sometimes a man of genius displays no talents, even among those who are able to decide on them; his genius, like Aeneas, is veiled by a cloud, and remains unperceived by his associates. This was the case of Goldsmith; who was so far from displaying a fine genius, that even his literary companions, before the publication of his beautiful poems, regarded him as a compiler for the Booksellers, not as a writer for men of taste. Sometimes, when a writer displays an early genuis, it is not expressed with all its force. Several have began versifiers, and concluded poets; and perhaps this is no unjust idea of Pope.
(pp. 32-3)",,23835,"","""In the violent struggle of his mind, he may give a wrong direction to his talents; as Swift, in two pindaric odes, which have been unfortunately preserved in his works.""","",2014-04-29 20:51:49 UTC,""
7879,"",ECCO-TCP,2014-04-29 20:55:02 UTC,"Let me reflect a moment on the scene that occupies my imagination. Men of genius! the reflection is addressed to you. Milton had perhaps wandered in the fields of fancy, and consoled his blindness with listening to the voice of his nation, that was to have resounded with his name. To Virgil, and Tasso, and Ariosto, not his masters but his rivals, their country had not been ungrateful. One had basked in the sunshine of a court; the other had seen the laurel wreath prepared for him at Rome; and the last lived to hear his name repeated in the streets, and saluted as the poet of his nation. Milton had enriched his national poetry with two epics--what were his rewards? Milton considered himself as fortunate in having one female who did not entirely abandon him; and one obscure fanatic, who was pleased with his poems because they were religious. What laurels! What felicities!
(pp. 59-60)",,23839,"","""Milton had perhaps wandered in the fields of fancy, and consoled his blindness with listening to the voice of his nation, that was to have resounded with his name.""","",2014-04-29 20:55:02 UTC,""
7879,"",ECCO-TCP,2014-04-29 20:56:06 UTC,"To solace mental fatigue by the amusements of fancy, is no loss of time. Students know how often the eye is busied in wandering over the page, while the mind lies in torpid inactivity; they therefore compute their time, not by the hours consumed in study, but by the real acquisitions they obtain; they do not number the voyages they make, but the gold and the diamonds they bring home. A man of letters best feels the truth of the maxim of Hesiod when applied to time, that
'Half is better than the whole.'
(p. 61)",,23840,"","""To solace mental fatigue by the amusements of fancy, is no loss of time. Students know how often the eye is busied in wandering over the page, while the mind lies in torpid inactivity; they therefore compute their time, not by the hours consumed in study, but by the real acquisitions they obtain; they do not number the voyages they make, but the gold and the diamonds they bring home.""",Metal,2014-04-29 20:56:06 UTC,""
7934,"",Reading,2014-06-19 16:51:54 UTC,"In all private misfortunes, in pain, in sickness, in sorrow, the weakest man, when his friend, and still more when a stranger visits him, is immediately impressed with the view in which they are likely to look upon his situation. Their view calls off his attention from his own view; and his breast is, in some measure, becalmed the moment they come into his presence. This effect is produced instantaneously and, as it were, mechanically; but, with a weak man, it is not of long continuance. His own view of his situation immediately recurs upon him. He abandons himself, as before, to sighs and tears and lamentations; and endeavours, like a child that has not yet gone to school, to produce some sort of harmony between his own grief and the compassion of the spectator, not by moderating the former, but by importunately calling upon the latter.
(text from from econlib.org, III.i.65; cf. pp. 145-6 in Liberty Fund ed.) ",,24007,"","""Their view calls off his attention from his own view; and his breast is, in some measure, becalmed the moment they come into his presence. This effect is produced instantaneously and, as it were, mechanically; but, with a weak man, it is not of long continuance.""","",2014-06-19 16:51:54 UTC,""
7934,"",Reading,2014-06-19 19:40:15 UTC,"But though the virtues of prudence, justice, and beneficence, may, upon different occasions, be recommended to us almost equally by two different principles; those of self-command are, upon most occasions, principally and almost entirely recommended to us by one; by the sense of propriety, by regard to the sentiments of the supposed impartial spectator. Without the restraint which this principle imposes, every passion would, upon most occasions, rush headlong, if I may say so, to its own gratification. Anger would follow the suggestions of its own fury; fear those of its own violent agitations. Regard to no time or place would induce vanity to refrain from the loudest and most impertinent ostentation; or voluptuousness from the most open, indecent, and scandalous indulgence. Respect for what are, or for what ought to be, or for what upon a certain condition would be, the sentiments of other people, is the sole principle which, upon most occasions, overawes all those mutinous and turbulent passions into that tone and temper which the impartial spectator can enter into and sympathize with.
(text from http://www.econlib.org, VI.iii.55; cf. pp. 262-3 in Liberty Fund ed.)",,24036,"","""Without the restraint which this principle imposes, every passion would, upon most occasions, rush headlong, if I may say so, to its own gratification.""","",2014-06-19 19:40:15 UTC,""
5767,"",Reading,2014-06-22 17:14:06 UTC,"I shall, therefore, consider only such studies as we are at liberty to pursue or to neglect; and of these I know not how you will make a better choice, than by studying the civil law, as your father advises, and the ancient languages, as you had determined for yourself; at least resolve, while you remain in any settled residence, to spend a certain number of hours every day amongst your books. The dissipation of thought, of which you complain, is nothing more than the vacillation of a mind suspended between different motives, and changing its direction as any motive gains or loses strength. If you can but kindle in your mind any strong desire, if you can but keep predominant any wish for some particular excellence or attainment, the gusts of imagination will break away, without any effect upon your conduct, and commonly without any traces left upon the memory.
(I, pp. 258-9)",,24115,"","""The dissipation of thought, of which you complain, is nothing more than the vacillation of a mind suspended between different motives, and changing its direction as any motive gains or loses strength.""","",2014-06-22 17:14:06 UTC,"Letter from Samuel Johnson to James Boswell (London, 8 December 1763)"
7991,"",Searching in ECCO,2014-07-29 19:46:04 UTC,"The sensations of anticipated pleasure, are never felt with so much gratification as in our dreams; in our waking thoughts they excite joy, but in the still hour of slumber, they are productive of superlative happiness:--when awake many fortuitous circumstances may happen to perplex and discompose us; but when the body is laid asleep, and the mind disencumbered of its load, we think and act with additional force--nothing then obstructs our activity or retards our promised bliss.--The mind, freed from her weighty companion, roams at large through the regions of fancy; and at once conceives and invents, beautifies and illustrates, amplifies and adorns.
(p. 58)",,24345,"","""The mind, freed from her weighty companion, roams at large through the regions of fancy; and at once conceives and invents, beautifies and illustrates, amplifies and adorns.""","",2014-07-29 19:46:04 UTC,""
5767,"",Reading in ECCO-TCP,2018-04-26 23:11:25 UTC,"I cannot allow any fragment whatever that floats in my memory concerning the great subject of this work to be lost. Though a small particular may appear trifling to some, it will be relished by others; while every little spark adds something to the general blaze: and to please the true, candid, warm admirers of Johnson, and in any degree increase the splendour of his reputation, I bid defiance to the shafts of ridicule, or even of malignity. Showers of them have been discharged at my ""Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides;"" yet it still sails unhurt along the stream of time, and, as an attendant upon Johnson, ""Pursues the triumph, and partakes the gale.""
(II, 167)",,25190,"","""I cannot allow any fragment whatever that floats in my memory concerning the great subject of this work to be lost.""","",2018-04-26 23:11:25 UTC,""