work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
6499,"",Brought to my notice by Patrick Abatiell,2009-03-16 00:00:00 UTC,"
SATURDAY 26 FEBRUARY. Last night Dempster came to me between ten and eleven and sat till one. He is really a most agreeable man: has fine sense, sweet dispositions, and the true manners of a gentleman. His sceptical notions give him a freedom and ease which in a companion is very pleasing, although to a man whose mind is possessed with serious thoughts of futurity, it is rather hurting to find them considered so lightly. He said he intended to write a treatise on the causes of happiness and misery. He considered the mind of man like a room, which is either made agreeable or the reverse by the pictures with which it is adorned. External circumstances are nothing to the purpose. Our great point is to have pleasing pictures in the inside. To illustrate this: we behold a man of quality in all the affluence of life. We are apt to imagined this man happy. We are apt to imagine that his gallery is hung with the most delightful paintings. But could we look into it, we should in all probability behold portraits of care, discontent, envy, languor, and distraction. When we see a beggar, how miserable do we think him! But let us examine his pictures. We will probably find merriment, hope, a keen stomach, a hearty meal, true friendship, the newspaper, and a pot of porter. The great art is to have an agreeable collection and to preserve them well.
This is really an ingenious and lively fancy. We gave some examples. Lord Elibank has just a cabinet of curiosities, which are well ranged and of which he has an exact catalogue. Macpherson has some bold portraits and wild landscapes. Lord Eglinton has had a variety of pieces, but they have been mostly slightly painted and are fading, so that his most frequent picture is Regret. The [End Page 203] mind of a young man (his gallery I mean) is often furnished different ways. According to the scenes he is placed in, so are his pictures. They disappear, and he gets a new set in a moment. But as he grows up, he gets some substantial pieces which he always preserves, although he may alter his smaller paintings in a moment. I said that he whose pictures shifted too often, like the glaiks, was too light-headed, and so in Scotland, he is called glaiked, an expression perfectly of a piece with his system.
(pp. 203-4)
",,17293,"REVISIT. INTEREST. USE. FASCINATING metaphor worked out in two paragraphs. Reminiscent of Crambe's theory?
I've included thrice: Room, Pictures, Cabinet
","""Lord Elibank has just a cabinet of curiosities [in his mind], which are well ranged and of which he has an exact catalogue.""",Rooms,2013-06-26 19:09:53 UTC,February
6499,"",Brought to my notice by Patrick Abatiell,2009-03-16 00:00:00 UTC,"SATURDAY 26 FEBRUARY. Last night Dempster came to me between ten and eleven and sat till one. He is really a most agreeable man: has fine sense, sweet dispositions, and the true manners of a gentleman. His sceptical notions give him a freedom and ease which in a companion is very pleasing, although to a man whose mind is possessed with serious thoughts of futurity, it is rather hurting to find them considered so lightly. He said he intended to write a treatise on the causes of happiness and misery. He considered the mind of man like a room, which is either made agreeable or the reverse by the pictures with which it is adorned. External circumstances are nothing to the purpose. Our great point is to have pleasing pictures in the inside. To illustrate this: we behold a man of quality in all the affluence of life. We are apt to imagined this man happy. We are apt to imagine that his gallery is hung with the most delightful paintings. But could we look into it, we should in all probability behold portraits of care, discontent, envy, languor, and distraction. When we see a beggar, how miserable do we think him! But let us examine his pictures. We will probably find merriment, hope, a keen stomach, a hearty meal, true friendship, the newspaper, and a pot of porter. The great art is to have an agreeable collection adn to preserve them well.
This is really an ingenious and lively fancy. We gave some examples. Lord Elibank has just a cabinet of curiosities, which are well ranged and of which he has an exact catalogue. Macpherson has some bold portraits and wild landscapes. Lord Eglinton has had a variety of pieces, but they have been mostly slightly painted and are fading, so that his most frequent picture is Regret. The [End Page 203] mind of a young man (his gallery I mean) is often furnished different ways. According to the scenes he is placed in, so are his pictures. They disappear, and he gets a new set in a moment. But as he grows up, he gets some substantial pieces which he always preserves, although he may alter his smaller paintings in a moment. I said that he whose pictures shifted too often, like the glaiks, was too light-headed, and so in Scotland, he is called glaiked, an expression perfectly of a piece with his system.
(pp. 203-4)
",,17294,"REVIST. INTEREST. USE. FASCINATING metaphor worked out in two paragraphs. Reminiscent of Crambe's theory?
I've included thrice: Room, Pictures, Cabinet
","""He considered the mind of man like a room, which is either made agreeable or the reverse by the pictures with which it is adorned.""",Rooms,2011-03-24 19:55:25 UTC,February
7267,"",Reading a draft of Dorothy Couchman's dissertation,2012-06-28 18:16:05 UTC,"If I may be allowed to conjecture what is the nature of that mysterious power by which a player really is the character which he represents, my notion is, that he must have a kind of double feeling. He must assume in a strong degree the character which he represents, while he at the same time retains the consciousness of his own character. The feelings and passions of the character which he represents, must take full possession as it were of the antichamber of his mind, while his own character remains in the innermost recess. This is experienced in some measure by the barrister who enters warmly into the cause of his client, while at the same time, when he examines himself coolly, he knows that he is much in the wrong, and does not even wish to prevail. But during the time of his pleading, the genuine colour of his mind is laid over with a temporary glaring varnish, which flies off instantaneously when he has finished his harangue. The double feeling which I have mentioned is experienced by many men in the common intercourse of life. Were nothing but the real character to appear, society would not be half so safe and agreeable as we find it. Did we discover to our companions what we really think of them, frequent quarrels would ensue; and did we not express more regard for them than we really feel, the pleasure of social intercourse would be very contracted. It being necessary then in the intercourse of life to have such appearances, and dissimulation being to most people irksome and fatiguing, we insensibly, for our own ease, adopt feelings suitable to every occasion, and so, like players, are to a certain degree a different character from our own. It is needless to mention many instances of this; every man's experience must have furnished him with a variety of instances, which will readily occur to him. He will recollect instances in every funeral that he has attended—every birth-day entertainment at which he has been a guest—every country seat, the beauties of which have been shewn him by its master--every party of pleasure in which he has shared---In short, he can hardly recollect a scene of social life, where he has not been conscious more or less, of having been obliged to work himself into a state of feeling, which he would not naturally have had.
(pp. 469-70)",2012-06-28,19808,"","""The feelings and passions of the character which he represents, must take full possession as it were of the antichamber of his mind, while his own character remains in the innermost recess.""",Rooms,2012-06-28 18:16:48 UTC,Essay II
7513,"","Reading Ann Jessie van Sant's Sensibility and the Novel (Cambridge UP, 1993), p. 60.",2013-07-09 03:05:47 UTC,"I am not unacquainted with the reasonings of materialists, that the whole of man is composed of one substance. But whoever can really bring himself to believe, that the consciousness of power is an attribute of matter, is, I am pretty certain, not composed of the same substance that I am; for I have an immediate impression of that proposition being as impossible to believe, as that my eyes are shut when I feel they are wide open, and perceive by them a number and diversity of objects. To reason or even fancy, concerning what we do not see, from what we have seen, is pleasing to the mind. And my similitude between a watch in its case, and the soul in its material frame, will, I persuade myself, be agreeable to all my readers, whose dispositions are mild, and like better to be pleased with what they read, than to attack it. An antient philosopher indeed, full of real or pretended honesty, declared it to be his wish that there were a window in his breast that every body might see the integrity and purity of his thoughts. It would be truly be very pretty and amusing if our bodies were transparent, so that we could see one anothers sentiments and passions working as we see bees in a glass-hive.
(I, p. 143 in SUP edition)",,21540,"","""An antient philosopher indeed, full of real or pretended honesty, declared it to be his wish that there were a window in his breast that every body might see the integrity and purity of his thoughts. It would be truly be very pretty and amusing if our bodies were transparent, so that we could see one anothers sentiments and passions working as we see bees in a glass-hive.""","Animals, Optics, and Rooms",2013-07-09 03:05:47 UTC,""
7677,"","Searching ""testimony"" and ""sense"" in ECCO-TCP",2013-09-18 04:12:22 UTC,"What are we to say to such actions as these; or how account for this operation of the mind in dreaming? It should seem, that the imagination, by day, as well as by night, is always employed; and that often, against our wills, it intrudes where it is least commanded or desired. While awake, and in health, this busy principle cannot much delude us: it may build castles in the air, and raise a thousand phantoms before us; but we have every one of the senses alive, to bear testimony to its falsehood. Our eyes shew us that the prospect is not present; our hearing, and our touch, depose against its reality; and our taste and smelling are equally vigilant in detecting the impostor. Reason, therefore, at once gives judgment upon the cause; and the vagrant intruder, imagination, is imprisoned, or banished from the mind. But in sleep it is otherwise; having, as much as possible, put our senses from their duty, having closed the eyes from seeing, and the ears, taste, and smelling, from their peculiar functions, and having diminished even the touch itself, by all the arts of softness, the imagination is then left to riot at large, and to lead the understanding without an opposer. Every incursive idea then becomes a reality; and the mind, not having one power that can prove the illusion, takes them for truths. As in madness, the senses, from struggling with the imagination, are at length forced to submit, so, in sleep, they seem for a while soothed into the like submission: the smallest violence exerted upon any one of them, however, rouzes all the rest in their mutual defence; and the imagination, that had for a while told its thousand falshoods, is totally driven away, or only permitted to pass under the custody of such as are every moment ready to detect its imposition.
(pp. 143-4)",,22777,"","""While awake, and in health, this busy principle [the imagination] cannot much delude us: it may build castles in the air, and raise a thousand phantoms before us; but we have every one of the senses alive, to bear testimony to its falsehood.""",Court,2013-09-18 04:12:22 UTC,Chap. VI. Of Sleep and Hunger.
7677,"",Searching in ECCO-TCP,2013-09-18 04:14:50 UTC,"What are we to say to such actions as these; or how account for this operation of the mind in dreaming? It should seem, that the imagination, by day, as well as by night, is always employed; and that often, against our wills, it intrudes where it is least commanded or desired. While awake, and in health, this busy principle cannot much delude us: it may build castles in the air, and raise a thousand phantoms before us; but we have every one of the senses alive, to bear testimony to its falsehood. Our eyes shew us that the prospect is not present; our hearing, and our touch, depose against its reality; and our taste and smelling are equally vigilant in detecting the impostor. Reason, therefore, at once gives judgment upon the cause; and the vagrant intruder, imagination, is imprisoned, or banished from the mind. But in sleep it is otherwise; having, as much as possible, put our senses from their duty, having closed the eyes from seeing, and the ears, taste, and smelling, from their peculiar functions, and having diminished even the touch itself, by all the arts of softness, the imagination is then left to riot at large, and to lead the understanding without an opposer. Every incursive idea then becomes a reality; and the mind, not having one power that can prove the illusion, takes them for truths. As in madness, the senses, from struggling with the imagination, are at length forced to submit, so, in sleep, they seem for a while soothed into the like submission: the smallest violence exerted upon any one of them, however, rouzes all the rest in their mutual defence; and the imagination, that had for a while told its thousand falshoods, is totally driven away, or only permitted to pass under the custody of such as are every moment ready to detect its imposition.
(pp. 143-4)",,22778,"","""Reason, therefore, at once gives judgment upon the cause; and the vagrant intruder, imagination, is imprisoned, or banished from the mind.""",Court and Inhabitants,2013-09-18 04:14:50 UTC,Chap. VI. Of Sleep and Hunger.
7940,"",Reading at British Library,2014-06-20 17:40:22 UTC,"Tuesday, 15. I went on to Witney. I am surprised at the plainness and artlessness of this people. Who would imagine, that they lived within ten, yea, or fifty miles of Oxford? Wednesday, 16. I preached at South-lye. Here it was, that I preached my first sermon, six and forty years ago. One man was in my present audience, who heard it. Most of the rest are gone to their long home. After preaching at Witney in the Evening, I met the believers apart, and was greatly refreshed among them. So simple a people I scarce ever saw. They did ""open the window in their breast."" And it was easy to discern, that God was there, filling them with joy and peace in believing.
(p. 42)",,24064,"USE IN ENTRY?
Notes: October, 1770. Google Books search turns up same window quotation in an 1827 Methodist miscellany, under the heading Taste. Add to Rooms? ","""So simple a people I scarce ever saw. They did 'open the window in their breast.' And it was easy to discern, that God was there, filling them with joy and peace in believing.""",Rooms,2014-06-20 17:40:52 UTC,""
7982,"",Searching in ECCO-TCP,2014-07-25 02:38:16 UTC,"It is true, Painting should have due encouragement; as the painter can undoubtedly fit up our apartments in a much more elegant manner than the upholsterer; but I should think a man of fashion makes but an indifferent exchange, who lays out all that time in furnishing his house which he should have employed in the furniture of his head; a person who shews no other symptoms of taste than his cabinet or gallery, might as well boast to me of the furniture of his kitchen.
(I, pp. 142-143)",,24264,"","""But I should think a man of fashion makes but an indifferent exchange, who lays out all that time in furnishing his house which he should have employed in the furniture of his head; a person who shews no other symptoms of taste than his cabinet or gallery, might as well boast to me of the furniture of his kitchen.""",Rooms,2014-07-25 02:38:16 UTC,LETTER XXXIII. To the same
8132,"","Reading Sean Silver, The Mind is a Collection: Case Studies in Eighteenth-Century Thought (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2015), 275n.",2016-03-11 17:25:05 UTC,"[March 20, 1768] We went at night to the inn on Barnby Moor. We were now jumbled into old acquaintance. I felt myself quite strong, and exulted when I compared my present mind with my mind some years ago. Formerly my mind was quite a lodging-house for all ideas who chose to put up there, so that it was at the mercy of accident, for I had no fixed mind of my own. Now my mind is a house where, though the street rooms and the upper floors are open to strangers, yet there is always a settled family in the back parlour and sleeping-closet behind it; and this family can judge of the ideas which come to lodge. This family! this landlord, let me say, or this landlady, as the mind and the soul are both she. I shall confuse myself with metaphor. Let me then have done with it. Only this more. The ideas--my lodgers--are of all sorts. Some, gentlemen of the law, who pay me a great deal more than others. Divines of all sorts have been with me, and have ever disturbed me. When I first took up house, Presbyterian ministers used to make me melancholy with dreary tones. Methodists next shook my passions. Romish clergy filled me with solemn ideas, and, although their statues and many movable ornaments are gone, yet they drew some pictures upon my walls with such deep strokes that they still remain. They are, indeed, only agreeable ones. I had Deists for a very short while. But they, being sceptics, were perpetually alarming me with thoughts that my walls were made of clay and could not last, so I was glad to get rid of them. I am forced to own that my rooms have been occupied by women of the town, and by some ladies of abandoned manners. But I am resolved that by degrees there shall be only decent people and innocent, gay lodgers.
(pp. 137-8)",,24872,"How did I miss this when I was drafting my book! -- too bad for Rooms.
META-METAPHORICAL","""Formerly my mind was quite a lodging-house for all ideas who chose to put up there, so that it was at the mercy of accident, for I had no fixed mind of my own. Now my mind is a house where, though the street rooms and the upper floors are open to strangers, yet there is always a settled family in the back parlour and sleeping-closet behind it; and this family can judge of the ideas which come to lodge.""",Rooms,2016-03-11 17:25:05 UTC,"March 20, 1768"
8132,"","Reading Sean Silver, The Mind is a Collection: Case Studies in Eighteenth-Century Thought (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2015), 275n.",2016-03-11 17:30:00 UTC,"[March 20, 1768] We went at night to the inn on Barnby Moor. We were now jumbled into old acquaintance. I felt myself quite strong, and exulted when I compared my present mind with my mind some years ago. Formerly my mind was quite a lodging-house for all ideas who chose to put up there, so that it was at the mercy of accident, for I had no fixed mind of my own. Now my mind is a house where, though the street rooms and the upper floors are open to strangers, yet there is always a settled family in the back parlour and sleeping-closet behind it; and this family can judge of the ideas which come to lodge. This family! this landlord, let me say, or this landlady, as the mind and the soul are both she. I shall confuse myself with metaphor. Let me then have done with it. Only this more. The ideas--my lodgers--are of all sorts. Some, gentlemen of the law, who pay me a great deal more than others. Divines of all sorts have been with me, and have ever disturbed me. When I first took up house, Presbyterian ministers used to make me melancholy with dreary tones. Methodists next shook my passions. Romish clergy filled me with solemn ideas, and, although their statues and many movable ornaments are gone, yet they drew some pictures upon my walls with such deep strokes that they still remain. They are, indeed, only agreeable ones. I had Deists for a very short while. But they, being sceptics, were perpetually alarming me with thoughts that my walls were made of clay and could not last, so I was glad to get rid of them. I am forced to own that my rooms have been occupied by women of the town, and by some ladies of abandoned manners. But I am resolved that by degrees there shall be only decent people and innocent, gay lodgers.
(pp. 137-8)",,24874,"","""Only this more. The ideas--my lodgers--are of all sorts. Some, gentlemen of the law, who pay me a great deal more than others. Divines of all sorts have been with me, and have ever disturbed me. When I first took up house, Presbyterian ministers used to make me melancholy with dreary tones. Methodists next shook my passions. Romish clergy filled me with solemn ideas, and, although their statues and many movable ornaments are gone, yet they drew some pictures upon my walls with such deep strokes that they still remain. They are, indeed, only agreeable ones. I had Deists for a very short while. But they, being sceptics, were perpetually alarming me with thoughts that my walls were made of clay and could not last, so I was glad to get rid of them. I am forced to own that my rooms have been occupied by women of the town, and by some ladies of abandoned manners. But I am resolved that by degrees there shall be only decent people and innocent, gay lodgers.""",Inhabitants,2016-03-11 17:30:00 UTC,""