updated_at,id,text,theme,metaphor,work_id,reviewed_on,provenance,created_at,comments,context,dictionary
2009-09-14 19:41:35 UTC,14667,"But her daughter, her lovely daughter! --with all the gentleness of her mother's disposition, she unites the warmth of her father's heart, and the strength of her father's understanding. Her eyes, in their silent state, (if I may use the term) give the beholder every idea of feminine softness; when sentiment or feeling animates them, how eloquent they are! When Roubigné talks, I hate vice, and despise folly; when his wife speaks, I pity both; but the music of Julia's tongue gives the throb of virtue to my heart, and lifts my soul to somewhat superhuman.
I mention not the graces of her form; yet they are such as would attract the admiration of those, by whom the beauties of her mind might not be understood. In one as well as the other, there is a remarkable conjunction of tenderness with dignity; but her beauty is of that sort, on which we cannot properly decide independent of the soul, because the first is never uninformed by the latter.
To the flippancy, which we are apt to ascribe to females of her age, she seems utterly a stranger. Her disposition indeed appears to lean, in an uncommon degree, towards the serious. Yet she breaks forth at times into filial attempts at gaiety, to amuse that disquiet which she observes in her father; but even then it looks like a conquest over the natural pensiveness of her mind. This melancholy might be held a fault in Julia; but the fortune of her family has been such, that none but those, who are totally exempted from thinking, could have looked on it with indifference.
It is only indeed, when she would confer happiness on others, that she seems perfectly to enjoy it. The rustics around us talk of her affability and good-humour with the liveliest gratitude; and I have been witness to several scenes, where she dispensed mirth and gaiety to some poor families in our neighbourhood, with a countenance as cheerful as the most unthinking of them all. At those seasons I have been tempted from the gravity natural to me, and borrowed from trifles a temporary happiness. Had you seen me yesterday dancing in the midst of a band of grape-gatherers, you would have blushed for your friend; but I danced with Julia.
I am called from my description by the approach of her whom I would describe.
(pp. 49-52)","","""I mention not the graces of her form; yet they are such as would attract the admiration of those, by whom the beauties of her mind might not be understood. In one as well as the other, there is a remarkable conjunction of tenderness with dignity; but her beauty is of that sort, on which we cannot properly decide independent of the soul, because the first is never uninformed by the latter.""",5483,2009-04-14,HDIS,2003-10-21 00:00:00 UTC,"•Compare with previous citation (Julia's ""sketch"" of his mind). This record doesn't otherwise belong in this database?
•I've reviewed the record and made changes to figure type. I think it belongs in the database (10/21/2003)
REVISIT.","Vol I, Letter 5",""
2009-09-14 19:48:32 UTC,16952,"Besides these, there were certain evenings appropriated to exercises of the mind. ""It is not enough, said Annesly, to put weapons into those hands which never have been taught the use of them; the reading we recommend to youth will store their minds with intelligence, if they attend to it properly; but to go a little farther, we must accustom them to apply it, we must teach them the art of comparing the ideas with which it has furnished them."" In this view it was the practice, at those [Page 45] stated times I have mentioned, for Billy, or his sister, to read a select passage of some classical author, on whose relations they delivered opinions, or on whose sentiments they offered a comment. Never was seen more satisfaction on a countenance, than used to enlighten their father's, at the delivery of those observations, which his little philosophers were accustomed to make: indeed, there could scarcely, even to a stranger, be a more pleasing exhibition; their very errors were delightful, because they were the errors of benevolence, generosity, and virtue.","","""Besides these, there were certain evenings appropriated to exercises of the mind.""",5418,,"",2007-03-20 00:00:00 UTC,"","Vol. 1, Chap. 4",""
2011-09-14 03:51:55 UTC,19157,"The Negroes who are all in troops are sorted so as to match each other in size and strength. Every ten Negroes have a driver, who walks behind them, holding in his hand a short whip and a long one. You will too easily guess the use of these weapons; a circumstance of all others the most horrid. They are naked, male and female, down to the girdle, and you constantly observe where the application has been made. But however dreadful this must appear to a humane European, I will do the creoles the justice to say, they would be as averse to it as we are, could it be avoided, which has often been tried to no purpose. When one comes to be better acquainted with the nature of the Negroes, the horrour of it must wear off. It is the suffering of the human mind that constitutes the greatest misery of punishment, but with them it is merely corporeal. As to the brutes it inflicts no wound on their mind, whose Natures seem made to bear it, and whose sufferings are not attended with shame or pain beyond the present moment. When they are regularly Ranged, each has a little basket, which he carries up the hill filled with the manure and returns with a load of canes to the Mill. They go up at a trot, and return at a gallop, and did you not know the cruel necessity of this alertness, you would believe them the merriest people in the world.
(pp. 127-8)","","""As to the brutes it [whipping] inflicts no wound on their mind, whose Natures seem made to bear it, and whose sufferings are not attended with shame or pain beyond the present moment.""",7089,,"Reading Robin Blackburn's The Making of New World Slavery (London: Verso, 2010), 425.",2011-09-14 03:51:55 UTC,USE IN ENTRY?,"",""
2013-06-27 03:18:48 UTC,21164,"From these observations, it would appear, that genius of every kind derives its immediate origin from the imagination. Mere imagination, it is true, will not constitute genius. If fancy were left entirely to itself, it would run into wild caprice and extravagance, unworthy to be called invention. A man who throws out indigested notions, contradictory positions, trite and vulgar sentiments, or foolish whimsies, is not said to have invented them, but is rather blamed for not having avoided them. As fancy has an indirect dependence both on sense and memory, from which it receives the first elements of all its conceptions, so when it exerts itself in the way of genius, it has an immediate connexion with judgment, which must constantly attend it, and correct and regulate its suggestions. This connexion is so intimate, that a man can scarce be said to have invented till he has exercised his judgment. But still it is true that imagination invents, and judgment only scrutinizes and determines concerning what it has invented. It is imagination that produces genius; the other intellectual faculties lend their assistance to rear the offspring of imagination to maturity. It is also true, that in matters of speculation, imagination resigns its discoveries into the hands of reason, sooner than in the arts, and leaves it more to finish. Yet it always supplies the subject on which reason is to work. Without judgment, imagination would be extravagant; but without imagination, judgment could do nothing. A bright and vigorous imagination joined with a very moderate judgment, will produce genius, incorrect, it may be, but fertile and extensive: but the nicest judgment unattended with a good imagination, cannot bestow a single spark of genius. It will form good sense, it will enable a man to perceive every defect and error in the discoveries of others; but it cannot qualify him for supplying these defects, or for being himself the author of any new invention. A man of mere judgment, is essentially different from a man of genius. The former can employ his reason only on subjects that are provided by others; but the latter can provide subjects for himself. This ability is owing solely to his possessing a comprehensive imagination, which the former wants.
(I.ii, pp. 36-8)","","""It is imagination that produces genius; the other intellectual faculties lend their assistance to rear the offspring of imagination to maturity.""",7486,,Reading in C-H Lion,2013-06-27 03:18:48 UTC,"","",""
2013-06-27 03:21:53 UTC,21167,"Genius implies regularity, as well as comprehensiveness of imagination. Regularity arises in a great measure from such a turn of imagination as enables the associating principles, not only to introduce proper ideas, but also to connect the design of the whole with every idea that is introduced. When the design is steddily kept in view, and the mind so formed as to be strongly affected by that associating quality by which the design is related to the means of executing it, the imagination can scarce fail of being regular and correct. Any conception that is present, will introduce most readily those ideas which are related to the main design, as well as to itself, though there should be a thousand others bearing the same relation to itself, but unconnected with the general subject. These latter have only one tie, but the former have a double relation, and will therefore rush into the thoughts with double violence. They will occur and be observed, while the rest never come into view, or, if they make their appearance, are rejected so quickly that we instantly forget our ever having thought of them. No sooner does the imagination, in a moment of wandering, suggest any idea not conducive to the design, than the conception of this design breaks in of its own accord, and, like an antagonist muscle, counteracting the other association, draws us off to the view of a more proper idea.
(I.iii, pp. 46-7)
","","""No sooner does the imagination, in a moment of wandering, suggest any idea not conducive to the design, than the conception of this design breaks in of its own accord, and, like an antagonist muscle, counteracting the other association, draws us off to the view of a more proper idea.""",7486,,Reading in C-H Lion,2013-06-27 03:21:53 UTC,"","",""
2013-06-27 18:10:40 UTC,21183,"In a man of genius, imagination can scarce take a single step, but judgment should attend it. The most luxuriant fancy stands most in need of being checked by judgment. As a rich soil produces not only the largest quantity of grain, but also the greatest profusion of such weeds as tend to choak it; so a fertile imagination, along with just and useful ideas, produces many trifling, false, and improper thoughts, which, if they be not immediately examined by reason, and speedily rejected, will over-run and obstruct the truth or the beauty which the others might have produced. Judgment cannot collect ideas, but it revises those which fancy has collected, and either adopts or rejects them, as it finds cause. Though a bright and comprehensive fancy be the principal ingredient in genius, yet nothing is so dangerous as to affect to display it constantly, or to indulge it without any control from reflection; nothing is productive of greater faults. This leads philosophers to construct whimsical hypotheses, instead of inventing just theories. This leads poets to describe improbable events and unnatural characters, and to search for unseasonable wit and ill-timed splendour, when judgment would have directed them to imitate nature with exactness, and to study simplicity of expression. This leads painters capriciously to create imaginary decorations, instead of inventing natural and consistent embeilishments. Imagination must set all the ideas and all the analogies of things, which it collects, before the discerning eye of reason, and submit them absolutely to its sovereign decision. It is justly observed by Quintilian, that every fiction of the human fancy is approved in the moment of its production. The exertion of the mind which is requisite in forming it, is agreeable; and the face of novelty which infant conceptions wear, fails not to recommend them promiscuously, till reason has had time to survey and examine them. Were reason never to scrutinize them, all our ideas would be retained indiscriminately, and the productions of fancy would be perfectly monstrous. While a man is engaged in composition or investigation, he often seems to himself to be fired with his subject, and to teem with ideas; but on revising the work, finds that his judgment is offended, and his time lost. An idea that sparkled in the eye of fancy, is often condemned by judgment as false and unsubstantial. A more rigid exercise of this latter faculty, would have preserved Tasso from introducing sentiments which have show without justness, and figures which surprise and dazzle, but are unsuitable to the purpose to which they ought to have been subservient; and would have enabled him to escape the censure of having overspread his work with tinsel, and thus sullied the lustre of the pure gold which it contains.
(I.iv, pp. 75-8)","","""Imagination must set all the ideas and all the analogies of things, which it collects, before the discerning eye of reason, and submit them absolutely to its sovereign decision.""",7486,,Reading in C-H Lion,2013-06-27 18:10:40 UTC,"","",Eye
2013-06-27 18:11:50 UTC,21184,"In a man of genius, imagination can scarce take a single step, but judgment should attend it. The most luxuriant fancy stands most in need of being checked by judgment. As a rich soil produces not only the largest quantity of grain, but also the greatest profusion of such weeds as tend to choak it; so a fertile imagination, along with just and useful ideas, produces many trifling, false, and improper thoughts, which, if they be not immediately examined by reason, and speedily rejected, will over-run and obstruct the truth or the beauty which the others might have produced. Judgment cannot collect ideas, but it revises those which fancy has collected, and either adopts or rejects them, as it finds cause. Though a bright and comprehensive fancy be the principal ingredient in genius, yet nothing is so dangerous as to affect to display it constantly, or to indulge it without any control from reflection; nothing is productive of greater faults. This leads philosophers to construct whimsical hypotheses, instead of inventing just theories. This leads poets to describe improbable events and unnatural characters, and to search for unseasonable wit and ill-timed splendour, when judgment would have directed them to imitate nature with exactness, and to study simplicity of expression. This leads painters capriciously to create imaginary decorations, instead of inventing natural and consistent embeilishments. Imagination must set all the ideas and all the analogies of things, which it collects, before the discerning eye of reason, and submit them absolutely to its sovereign decision. It is justly observed by Quintilian, that every fiction of the human fancy is approved in the moment of its production. The exertion of the mind which is requisite in forming it, is agreeable; and the face of novelty which infant conceptions wear, fails not to recommend them promiscuously, till reason has had time to survey and examine them. Were reason never to scrutinize them, all our ideas would be retained indiscriminately, and the productions of fancy would be perfectly monstrous. While a man is engaged in composition or investigation, he often seems to himself to be fired with his subject, and to teem with ideas; but on revising the work, finds that his judgment is offended, and his time lost. An idea that sparkled in the eye of fancy, is often condemned by judgment as false and unsubstantial. A more rigid exercise of this latter faculty, would have preserved Tasso from introducing sentiments which have show without justness, and figures which surprise and dazzle, but are unsuitable to the purpose to which they ought to have been subservient; and would have enabled him to escape the censure of having overspread his work with tinsel, and thus sullied the lustre of the pure gold which it contains.
(I.iv, pp. 75-8)","","""It is justly observed by Quintilian, that every fiction of the human fancy is approved in the moment of its production. The exertion of the mind which is requisite in forming it, is agreeable; and the face of novelty which infant conceptions wear, fails not to recommend them promiscuously, till reason has had time to survey and examine them.""",7486,,Reading in C-H Lion,2013-06-27 18:11:50 UTC,"","",Inhabitants
2013-06-27 18:13:05 UTC,21185,"In a man of genius, imagination can scarce take a single step, but judgment should attend it. The most luxuriant fancy stands most in need of being checked by judgment. As a rich soil produces not only the largest quantity of grain, but also the greatest profusion of such weeds as tend to choak it; so a fertile imagination, along with just and useful ideas, produces many trifling, false, and improper thoughts, which, if they be not immediately examined by reason, and speedily rejected, will over-run and obstruct the truth or the beauty which the others might have produced. Judgment cannot collect ideas, but it revises those which fancy has collected, and either adopts or rejects them, as it finds cause. Though a bright and comprehensive fancy be the principal ingredient in genius, yet nothing is so dangerous as to affect to display it constantly, or to indulge it without any control from reflection; nothing is productive of greater faults. This leads philosophers to construct whimsical hypotheses, instead of inventing just theories. This leads poets to describe improbable events and unnatural characters, and to search for unseasonable wit and ill-timed splendour, when judgment would have directed them to imitate nature with exactness, and to study simplicity of expression. This leads painters capriciously to create imaginary decorations, instead of inventing natural and consistent embeilishments. Imagination must set all the ideas and all the analogies of things, which it collects, before the discerning eye of reason, and submit them absolutely to its sovereign decision. It is justly observed by Quintilian, that every fiction of the human fancy is approved in the moment of its production. The exertion of the mind which is requisite in forming it, is agreeable; and the face of novelty which infant conceptions wear, fails not to recommend them promiscuously, till reason has had time to survey and examine them. Were reason never to scrutinize them, all our ideas would be retained indiscriminately, and the productions of fancy would be perfectly monstrous. While a man is engaged in composition or investigation, he often seems to himself to be fired with his subject, and to teem with ideas; but on revising the work, finds that his judgment is offended, and his time lost. An idea that sparkled in the eye of fancy, is often condemned by judgment as false and unsubstantial. A more rigid exercise of this latter faculty, would have preserved Tasso from introducing sentiments which have show without justness, and figures which surprise and dazzle, but are unsuitable to the purpose to which they ought to have been subservient; and would have enabled him to escape the censure of having overspread his work with tinsel, and thus sullied the lustre of the pure gold which it contains.
(I.iv, pp. 75-8)","","""While a man is engaged in composition or investigation, he often seems to himself to be fired with his subject, and to teem with ideas; but on revising the work, finds that his judgment is offended, and his time lost. An idea that sparkled in the eye of fancy, is often condemned by judgment as false and unsubstantial.""",7486,,Reading in C-H Lion,2013-06-27 18:13:05 UTC,"","",Eye
2013-06-27 18:48:19 UTC,21216,"On the other hand, there may be some degree of invention in a particular art, without a capacity of correspondent execution. A person may compose in music, who cannot perform. Many have invented the subject of a picture, and in idea designed the whole of it, so that, from their description of their conception, a master might execute it, though they themselves never used the pencil. Others might proceed a step farther; they could sketch out the piece, without being able to colour it. It is remarked of Pietro Testa, that in drawings, his execution is both masterly and correct, but notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding his having possessed invention sublime and exuberant, he attempted often, without success, to acquire the art of colouring. In like manner, a person may conceive the whole plan of a poem, and even express it agreeably in prose, who cannot cloath it with numbers. The Telemachus of Fenelon is a direct example of this. Such persons possess real genius, and perhaps a high degree of it, so far as it extends: but they show not a genius complete in the art to which it points. In order to compleat genius in any of the arts, a man must possess the power of employing a proper vehicle, congruous to the nature of that art, for conveying the conceptions of his imagination to the senses and the souls of other men. It is this that puts it in the power of genius to show itself: without this, its finest conceptions would perish, like an infant in the womb; without this, the brightest imagination would be like a vigorous mind confined in a lame or paralytic body. Want of skill in execution was, perhaps, the only thing that hindered some of the earliest painters, and some of the first restorers of the art, who are now neglected and almost forgotten, from obtaining a very high rank.
(III.vii, pp. 418-20)","","""It is this that puts it in the power of genius to show itself: without this, its finest conceptions would perish, like an infant in the womb; without this, the brightest imagination would be like a vigorous mind confined in a lame or paralytic body.""",7486,,Reading in C-H Lion,2013-06-27 18:48:19 UTC,"","",Inhabitants
2014-10-20 02:17:24 UTC,24478,"The punctilio's indeed on which he depends, for his own peace, and the peace of society, are so ridiculous in the eye of reason, that it is not a little surprising, how so many millions of reasonable beings should have sanctified them with their mutual consent and acquiescence; that they should have agreed to surround the seats of friendship, and the table of festivity, with so many thorns of inquietude, and snares of destruction.
(I, p. 72)",Mind's Eye,"""The punctilio's indeed on which he depends, for his own peace, and the peace of society, are so ridiculous in the eye of reason, that it is not a little surprising, how so many millions of reasonable beings should have sanctified them with their mutual consent and acquiescence; that they should have agreed to surround the seats of friendship, and the table of festivity, with so many thorns of inquietude, and snares of destruction.""",5418,,LION,2014-10-20 02:17:24 UTC,"","",""