text,updated_at,metaphor,created_at,context,theme,reviewed_on,dictionary,comments,provenance,id,work_id
"A Man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's lining;--rumple the one--you rumple the other. There is one certain exception however in this case, and that is, when you are so fortunate a fellow, as to have had your jerkin made of a gum-taffeta, and the body-lining to it, of a sarcenet or thin persian.
Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes Babylonius, Dyonisius Heracleotes, Antipater, Panaetius and Possidonius amongst the Greeks;-- Cato and Varro and Seneca amongst the Romans;--Pantenus and Clemens Alexandrinus and Montaigne amongst the Christians; and a score and a half of good honest, unthinking, Shandean people as ever lived, whose names I can't recollect,-- all pretended that their jerkins were made after this fashion,--you might have rumpled and crumpled, and doubled and creased, and fretted and fridged the outsides of them all to pieces;--in short, you might have played the very devil with them, and at the same time, not one of the insides of 'em would have been one button the worse, for all you had done to them.
I believe in my conscience that mine is made up somewhat after this sort:-- for never poor jerkin has been tickled off, at such a rate as it has been these last nine months together,--and yet I declare the lining to it,--as far as I am a judge of the matter, it is not a three-penny piece the worse;--pell mell, helter skelter, ding dong, cut and thrust, back stroke and fore stroke, side way and long way, have they been trimming it for me:--had there been the least gumminess in my lining,--by heaven! it had all of it long ago been fray'd and fretted to a thread.
(pp. 13-5: Norton, 114-5)",2012-07-25 20:56:03 UTC,"""A Man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's lining;--rumple the one--you rumple the other.""",2008-10-07 00:00:00 UTC,"Vol. 3, Chap.4","",2012-01-28,"","• A simile that is ""exactly like""! —think about Hume's copy-theory: ideas that exactly represent impressions.
• 2008-12-03.","Reading. Found again cited in Jonathan Lamb, Sterne's Fiction and the Double Principle (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989), 7. And again, Christina Lupton, Knowing Books: The Consciousness of Mediation in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 34.
",13758,5088
"'We were all pleas'd with the extravagance of the humour (tho' none of us knew at what the Letter aim'd. This is the product of some unfledg'd Student (said I) of the Universities, or Inns of Court, or some raw callow Citt (said River) who not content with being a proficient in his Trade, sets up for a singularity of Wit. I rather think (pursued Chappel) 'tis some young Author, who is more in love with himself than his Mistress, and therefore thinks the highest complement he can make her, is to tell her, she's sweeter than his own Stile. Let him be what he will I am sure (said Grave) he's a Coxcomb, if he could pen that Letter with any Opinion of a serious performance, and if he have no more judgment in his works, he's but a meer simile Monger at best, and his Wit lies in a Habit, and Jingle, without any design. Oh (said Fountain) there are abundance of our modern Authors, who labour with Mr. Bays's Distemper of forgetting the Plott or design of what they write. And yet (said Temple) their idle productions shall sell among the best! But with the same Fate (pursued Church) with some of the French Scriblers mention'd by Boileau, who, tho' they were mightily admir'd and bought up at first, yet they have lived to see themselves, and their Works forgot. This Letter (said Brook) shews that the force of Affectation draws a Veil before the Judgment, which else would govern Fancy according to Sense, and Reason. True (said Summer) Similes indeed, as Mr. Dryden observes, are the products of a Luxuriant Fancy, but this Author seems like Weeds, to be wholly over-run with it. This is the more pardonable Affectation (concluded Winter) because the shorter, but some will continue the extravagance to the extent of a Volume, without any satisfaction to the mind of the Reader, who can never be content with a meer laughter at folly for so long a time.'
(pp. 31-2)",2013-06-30 15:54:07 UTC,"""This Letter (said Brook) shews that the force of Affectation draws a Veil before the Judgment, which else would govern Fancy according to Sense, and Reason.""",2013-06-30 15:54:07 UTC,"","",,"","",C-H Lion,21307,7496
"Such a reverse in man's life awakens a better principle than curiosity: I could not help looking for some time at him as I sat in the remise--the more I look'd at him, his croix, and his basket, the stronger they wove themselves into my brain--I got out of the remise and went towards him.
(II, p. 49)",2013-10-26 19:38:27 UTC,"""I could not help looking for some time at him as I sat in the remise--the more I look'd at him, his croix, and his basket, the stronger they wove themselves into my brain.""",2013-10-26 19:38:27 UTC,"","",,"","",Searching in LION,23060,5301
"My father, who dipp'd into all kinds of books, upon looking into Lithopædus Senonesis de Partu difficili, published by Adrianus Smelvgot, had found out, That the lax and pliable state of a child's head in parturition, the bones of the cranium having no sutures at that time, was such,--that by force of the woman's efforts, which, in strong labour-pains, was equal, upon an average, to a weight of 470 pounds averdupoise acting perpendicularly upon it;--it so happened that, in 49 instances out of 50, the said head was compressed and moulded into the shape of an oblong conical piece of dough, such as a pastry-cook generally rolls up in order to make a pye of.---Good God! cried my father, what havock and destruction must this make in the infinitely fine and tender texture of the cerebellum!--Or if there is such a juice as Borri pretends,--is it not enough to make the clearest liquor in the world both feculent and mothery?
But how great was his apprehension, when he further understood, that this force, acting upon the very vertex of the head, not only injured the brain itself or cerebrum,--but that it necessarily squeez'd and propell'd the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, which was the immediate seat of the understanding.--Angels and Ministers of grace defend us! cried my father,--can any soul withstand this shock?--No wonder the intellectual web is so rent and tatter'd as we see it; and that so many of our best heads are no better than a puzzled skein of silk,--all perplexity,--all confusion within side.
(II.xix, pp. 172-4)",2015-11-24 21:58:14 UTC,"""Angels and Ministers of grace defend us! cried my father,--can any soul withstand this shock?--No wonder the intellectual web is so rent and tatter'd as we see it; and that so many of our best heads are no better than a puzzled skein of silk,--all perplexity,--all confusion within side.""",2015-11-24 21:57:49 UTC,"Volume II, chapter xix","",,"","",Contributed by Neal Curtis,24738,5088
"When my father was gone with this about a month, there was scarce a phænomenon of stupidity or of genius, which he could not readily solve by it;--it accounted for the eldest son being the greatest blockhead in the family.--Poor devil, he would say,--he made way for the capacity of his younger brothers.--It unriddled the observation of drivellers and monstrous heads,--shewing, à priori, it could not be otherwise,--unless * * * * I don't know what. It wonderfully explain'd and accounted for the acumen of the Asiatic genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose and common-place solution of a clearer sky, and a more perpetual sun-shine, &c.--which, for aught he knew, might as well rarify and dilute the faculties of the soul into nothing, by one extreme,--as they are condensed in colder climates by the other;--but he traced the affair up to its spring-head;--shew'd that, in warmer climates, nature had laid a lighter tax upon the fairest parts of the creation;--their pleasures more;--the necessity of their pains less, insomuch that the pressure and resistance upon the vertex was so slight, that the whole organization of the cerebellum was preserved;--nay, he did not believe, in natural births, that so much as a single thread of the net-work was broke or displaced,--so that the soul might just act as she liked.
(II.xix, pp. 176-7)",2015-11-24 22:04:53 UTC,"""It wonderfully explain'd and accounted for the acumen of the Asiatic genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose and common-place solution of a clearer sky, and a more perpetual sun-shine, &c.--which, for aught he knew, might as well rarify and dilute the faculties of the soul into nothing, by one extreme,--as they are condensed in colder climates by the other;--but he traced the affair up to its spring-head;--shew'd that, in warmer climates, nature had laid a lighter tax upon the fairest parts of the creation;--their pleasures more;--the necessity of their pains less, insomuch that the pressure and resistance upon the vertex was so slight, that the whole organization of the cerebellum was preserved;--nay, he did not believe, in natural births, that so much as a single thread of the net-work was broke or displaced,--so that the soul might just act as she liked.""",2015-11-24 22:04:05 UTC,"Volume II, chapter xix","",,"","",Contributed by Neal Curtis,24740,5088
"With all my precautions, how was my system turned topside turvy in the womb with my child! his head exposed to the hand of violence, and a pressure of 470 pounds averdupois weight acting so perpendicularly upon its apex---that at this hour 'tis ninety per Cent. insurance, that the fine network of the intellectual web be not rent and torn to a thousand tatters.
(IV.xix, p. 134; Norton, 216)",2016-02-23 16:03:36 UTC,"""With all my precautions, how was my system turned topside turvy in the womb with my child! his head exposed to the hand of violence, and a pressure of 470 pounds averdupois weight acting so perpendicularly upon its apex---that at this hour 'tis ninety per Cent. insurance, that the fine network of the intellectual web be not rent and torn to a thousand tatters.""",2016-02-23 16:03:36 UTC,"Vol. IV, Chap. xix","",,"","",Reading,24844,5088