work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
6939,"",Reading,2011-06-16 16:44:40 UTC,"Next follow the Psalms, with which you cannot be too conversant. If you have any taste, either for poetry or devotion, they will be your delight, and will afford you a continual feast. The Bible translation is far better than that used in the Common Prayer Book: and will often give you the sense, when the other is obscure. In this, as well as in all other parts of the scripture, you must be careful always to consult the margin, which gives you the corrections made since the last translation, and is generally preferable to the words of the text. I would wish you to select some of the Psalms that please you best, and get them by heart; or, at least, make yourself mistress of the sentiments contained in them: Dr. Delany's Life of David will show you the occasions on which several of them were composed, which add much to their beauty and propriety; and, by comparing them with the events of David's life, you will greatly enhance your pleasure in them. Never did the spirit of true piety breathe more strongly than in these divine songs; which, being added to a rich vein of poetry, makes them more captivating to my heart and imagination than any thing I ever read. You will consider how great disadvantages any poems must sustain from being rendered literally into prose, and then imagine how beautiful these must be in the original. May you be enabled, by reading them frequently, to transfuse into your own breast that holy flame which inspired the writer!--to delight in the Lord, and in his laws, like the Psalmist--to rejoice in him always, and to think ""one day in his courts better than a thousand!"" But may you escape the heart-piercing sorrow of such repentance as that of David, by avoiding sin, which humbled this unhappy king to the dust, and which cost him such bitter anguish, as it is impossible to read of without being moved. Not all the pleasures of the most prosperous sinner could counterbalance the hundredth part of those sensations described in his Penitential Psalms; and which must be the portion of every man, who has fallen from a religious state into such crimes, when once he recovers a sense of religion and virtue, and is brought to a real hatred of sin: however available such repentance may be to the safety and happiness of the soul after death, it is a state of such exquisite suffering here, that one cannot be enough surprised at the folly of those, who indulge in sin, with the hope of living to make their peace with God by repentance. Happy are they who preserve their innocence unsullied by any great or wilful crimes, and who have only the common failings of humanity to repent of: these are sufficiently mortifying to a heart deeply smitten with the love of virtue, and with the desire of perfection. There are many very striking prophecies of the Messiah in these divine songs; particularly in Psalm xxii: such may be found scattered up and down almost throughout the Old Testament. To bear testimony to him is the great and ultimate end, for which the spirit of prophecy was bestowed on the sacred writers:--but this will appear more plainly to you, when you enter on the study of prophecy, which you are now much too young to undertake.
(pp. 59-64)",,18685,pp. 29-31 in PGDP,"""May you be enabled, by reading them frequently, to transfuse into your own breast that holy flame which inspired the writer!""","",2011-06-16 16:44:40 UTC,"Volume I, Letter 2"
7388,"",Reading,2013-05-07 20:59:30 UTC,"It is that new invented virtue, which your masters canonize, that led their moral hero constantly to exhaust the stores of his powerful rhetoric in the expression of universal benevolence; whilst his heart was incapable of harbouring one spark of common parental affection. Benevolence to the whole species, and want of feeling for every individual with whom the professors come in contact, form the character of the new philosophy. Setting up for an unsocial independence, this their hero of vanity refuses the just price of common labour, as well as the tribute which opulence owes to genius, and which, when paid, honours the giver and the receiver; and then he pleads his beggary as an excuse for his crimes. He melts with tenderness for those only who touch him by the remotest relation, and then, without one natural pang, casts away, as a sort of offal and excrement, the spawn of his disgustful amours, and sends his children to the hospital of foundlings. The bear loves, licks, and forms her young; but bears are not philosophers. Vanity, however, finds its account in reversing the train of our natural feelings. Thousands admire the sentimental writer; the affectionate father is hardly known in his parish.
(pp. 34-5)",,20162,"","""It is that new invented virtue, which your masters canonize, that led their moral hero constantly to exhaust the stores of his powerful rhetoric in the expression of universal benevolence; whilst his heart was incapable of harbouring one spark of common parental affection.""","",2013-05-07 20:59:30 UTC,""
7388,"",Reading,2013-05-07 21:07:04 UTC,"In England we cannot work so hard as Frenchmen. Frequent relaxation is necessary to us. You are naturally more intense in your application. I did not know this part of your national character, until I went into France in 1773. At present, this your disposition to labour is rather increased than lessened. In your Assembly you do not allow yourselves a recess even on Sundays. We have two days in the week, besides the festivals; and besides five or six months of the summer and autumn. This continued, unremitted effort of the members of your Assembly, I take to be one among the causes of the mischief they have done. They who always labour can have no true judgment. You never give yourselves time to cool. You can never survey, from its proper point of sight, the work you have finished, before you decree its final execution. You can never plan the future by the past. You never go into the country, soberly and dispassionately to observe the effect of your measures on their objects. You cannot feel distinctly how far the people are rendered better and improved, or more miserable and depraved, by what you have done. You cannot see with your own eyes the sufferings and afflictions you cause. You know them but at a distance, on the statements of those who always flatter the reigning power, and who, amidst their representations of the grievances, inflame your minds against those who are oppressed. These are amongst the effects of unremitted labour, when men exhaust their attention, burn out their candles, and are left in the dark.--Malo meorum negligentiam, quam istorum obscuram diligentiam.
(pp. 72-4)",,20166,"","""You know them but at a distance, on the statements of those who always flatter the reigning power, and who, amidst their representations of the grievances, inflame your minds against those who are oppressed. These are amongst the effects of unremitted labour, when men exhaust their attention, burn out their candles, and are left in the dark.""","",2013-05-07 21:07:04 UTC,""
7389,"","Searching ""mind"" in OLL",2013-05-08 02:27:42 UTC,"Whenever The Adverse Party has raised a cry for peace with the Regicide, the answer has been little more than this, ""that the Administration wished for such a peace, full as much as the Opposition; but that the time was not convenient for making it."" Whatever else has been said was much in the same spirit. Reasons of this kind never touched the substantial merits of the war. They were in the nature of dilatory pleas, exceptions of form, previous questions. Accordingly all the arguments against a compliance with what was represented as the popular desire, (urged on with all possible vehemence and earnestness by the Jacobins) have appeared flat and languid, feeble and evasive. They appeared to aim only at gaining time. They never entered into the peculiar and distinctive character of the war. They spoke neither to the understanding nor to the heart. Cold as ice themselves, they never could kindle in our breasts a spark of that zeal, which is necessary to a conflict with an adverse zeal; much less were they made to infuse into our minds that stubborn persevering spirit, which alone is capable of bearing up against those vicissitudes of fortune which will probably occur, and those burthens which must be inevitably borne in a long war. I speak it emphatically, and with a desire that it should be marked, in a long war; because, without such a war, no experience has yet told us, that a dangerous power has ever been reduced to measure or to reason. I do not throw back my view to the Peloponnesian war of twenty-seven years; nor to two of the Punic wars, the first of twenty-four, the second of eighteen; nor to the more recent war concluded by the treaty of Westphalia, which continued, I think, for thirty. I go to what is but just fallen behind living memory, and immediately touches our own country. Let the portion of our history from the year 1689 to 1713 be brought before us. We shall find, that in all that period of twenty-four years, there were hardly five that could be called a season of peace; and the interval between the two wars was in reality, nothing more than a very active preparation for renovated hostility. During that period, every one of the propositions of peace came from the enemy: the first, when they were accepted, at the peace of Ryswick; the second, when they were rejected, at the congress at Gertruydenburgh; the last, when the war ended by the treaty of Utrecht. Even then, a very great part of the nation, and that which contained by far the most intelligent statesmen, was against the conclusion of the war. I do not enter into the merits of that question as between the parties. I only state the existence of that opinion as a fact, from whence you may draw such an inference as you think properly arises from it.
",,20169,"","""Cold as ice themselves, they never could kindle in our breasts a spark of that zeal, which is necessary to a conflict with an adverse zeal; much less were they made to infuse into our minds that stubborn persevering spirit, which alone is capable of bearing up against those vicissitudes of fortune which will probably occur, and those burthens which must be inevitably borne in a long war.""","",2013-05-08 02:27:42 UTC,""
5452,"","Searching ""mind"" in PGDP",2013-06-21 18:15:38 UTC,"I expect the incomparable fair one of Hamburg, that prodigy of beauty, and paragon of good sense, who has enslaved your mind, and inflamed your heart. If she is as well 'etrennee' as you say she shall, you will be soon out of her chains; for I have, by long experience, found women to be like Telephus's spear, if one end kills, the other cures.
(LONDON, February 2, 1759)",,21113,"","""I expect the incomparable fair one of Hamburg, that prodigy of beauty, and paragon of good sense, who has enslaved your mind, and inflamed your heart.""",Fetters,2013-06-21 18:15:38 UTC,""
5452,"",Searching in PGDP,2013-06-21 20:12:12 UTC,"As you found your brain considerably affected by the cold, you were very prudent not to turn it to poetry in that situation; and not less judicious in declining the borrowed aid of a stove, whose fumigation, instead of inspiration, would at best have produced what Mr. Pope calls a souterkin of wit. I will show your letter to Duval, by way of justification for not answering his challenge; and I think he must allow the validity of it; for a frozen brain is as unfit to answer a challenge in poetry, as a blunt sword is for a single combat.
(II.cxliii, pp. 133-4, LONDON, January 24, O. S. 1749.)",,21123,"""Sooterkin"" in OED. Means afterbirth in some contexts!?","""As you found your brain considerably affected by the cold, you were very prudent not to turn it to poetry in that situation; and not less judicious in declining the borrowed aid of a stove, whose fumigation, instead of inspiration, would at best have produced what Mr. Pope calls a souterkin of wit.""","",2013-06-21 20:12:12 UTC,""
7520,"",Reading; text from C-H Lion,2013-07-09 16:58:46 UTC,"The new prophesying Sect, I made mention of above, pretend, it seems, among many other Miracles, to have had a most signal one, acted premeditately, and with warning, before many hundreds of People, who actually give Testimony to the Truth of it. But I wou'd only ask, Whether there were present, among those hundreds, any one Person, who having never been of their Sect, or addicted to their Way, will give the same Testimony with them? I must not be contented to ask, Whether such a one had been wholly free of that particular Enthusiasm? but, Whether, before that time, he was esteem'd of so found a Judgment, and clear a Head, as to be wholly free of Melancholy, and in all likelihood incapable of all Enthusiasm besides? For otherwise, the Pannick may have been caught; the Evidence of the Senses lost, as in a Dream; and the Imagination so inflam'd, as in a moment to have burnt up every Particle of Judgment and Reason. The combustible Matters lie prepar'd within, and ready to take fire at a Spark; but chiefly in a Multitude seiz'd with that Spirit. No wonder if the Blaze arises so of a sudden; when innumerable Eyes glow with the Passion, and heaving Breasts are labouring with Inspiration: When not the Aspect only, but the very Breath and Exhalations of Men are infectious, and the inspiring Disease imparts it-self by insensible Transpiration. I am not a Divine good enough to resolve what Spirit that was which prov'd so catching among the antient Prophets, that even the profane Saul was taken by it. But I learn from holy Scripture, that there was the evil, as well as the good Spirit of Prophecy. And I find by present Experience, as well as by all Historys, Sacred and Profane, that the Operation of this Spirit is every where the same, as to the bodily Organs.
(pp. 44-5; p. 23 in Klein)",,21580,"","""For otherwise, the Pannick may have been caught; the Evidence of the Senses lost, as in a Dream; and the Imagination so inflam'd, as in a moment to have burnt up every Particle of Judgment and Reason. The combustible Matters lie prepar'd within, and ready to take fire at a Spark; but chiefly in a Multitude seiz'd with that Spirit. No wonder if the Blaze arises so of a sudden; when innumerable Eyes glow with the Passion, and heaving Breasts are labouring with Inspiration.""","",2013-07-09 16:58:46 UTC,Section 6
7541,"",Reading,2013-07-11 21:31:02 UTC,"Now by my grandame's beard--I will not thank you for your present--although my ears have been stunned with your goodness and kindness----the best young man!----and, good Lord! how shall we make him amends? &c. &c.----Phaw! simpleton, quoth I, do you not plainly ken, that he himself has a satisfaction in giving pleasure to his friends which more than repays him?--so I strove to turn off the notion of obligation--though I must confess, my heart at the same time felt a something, sure it was not envy--no, I detest it--I fear it was pride--for I feel within myself this moment, that could I turn the tables in repaying principal with treble interest----I should feel gratified--though perhaps not satisfied.--I have a long account to balance with you--about your comments upon the transcript;--you are a pretty fellow to dare put in your claim--to better sense--deeper thinking--and stronger reasoning than my wife self----to tell you the truth (tho' at my own expence) I read your letter the first time with some little chagrin;--your reasoning, tho' it hurt my pride--yet almost convinced my understanding.--I read it carefully a second time--pondered--weighed--and submitted--whenever a spark of vanity seems to be glowing at my heart--I will read your letter--and what then?--Why then humbled by a proper sense of my inferiority--I shall still have cause for pride----triumph----and comfort----when I reflect that my valued Confort--is the true friend of his sincerely affectionate
(I.xxxviii, pp. 104-5; pp. 77-8 in Carretta)",,21678,"","""I read it carefully a second time--pondered--weighed--and submitted--whenever a spark of vanity seems to be glowing at my heart--I will read your letter--and what then?""","",2013-07-11 21:31:02 UTC,"Vol. I, letter xxxviii"
7541,"",Reading; text from DocSouth,2013-07-11 21:36:09 UTC,"[...] Never so struck in my life;--it was on Friday night, between ten and eleven, just preparing for my concluding pipe--the Duke of M----'s man knocks.--""Have you heard the bad news?""--No--""the Duchess of Queensbury died last night.""--I felt fifty different sensations--unbelief was uppermost--when he crushed my incredibility, by saying he had been to know how his Grace did--who was also very poorly in health.--Now the preceding day, Thursday (the day on which she expired) I had received a very penitential letter from S----, dated from St. Helena;--this letter I inclosed in a long tedious epistle of my own--and sent to Petersham, believing the family to be all there.--The day after you left town her Grace died--that day week she was at my door--the day after I had the honor of a long audience in her dressing-room.--Alas! this hour blessed with health--crowned with honors--loaded with riches, and encircled with friends--the next reduced to a lump of poor clay--a tenement for worms.--Earth re-possesses part of what she gave--and the freed spirit mounts on wings of fire;--her disorder was a stoppage--she fell ill the evening of the Friday that I last saw her continued in her full senses to the last.--The good she had done reached the skies long before her lamented death--and are the only heralds that are worth the pursuit of wisdom:--as to her bad deeds, I have never heard of them--had it been for the best, God would have lent her a little longer to a foolish world, which hardly deserved so good a woman;--for my own part--I have lost a friend--and perhaps 'tis better so.--""Whatever is,"" &c. &c.--I wish S---- knew this heavy news, for many reasons.--I am inclined to believe her Grace's death is the only thing that will most conduce to his reform.--I fear neither his gratitude nor sensibility will be much hurt upon hearing the news--it will act upon his fears, and make him do right upon a base principle.--Hang him! he teazes me whenever I think of him.--I supped last night with St.----; he called in just now, and says he has a right to be remembered to you.--You and he are two odd monkeys--the more I abuse and rate you, the better friend you think me.--As you have found out that your spirits govern your head--you will of course contrive every method of keeping your instrument in tune;--sure I am that bathing--riding--walking--in succession--the two latter not violent, will brace your nerves--purify your blood--invigorate its circulation--add to the rest continency--yes, again I repeat it, continency;--before you reply, think--re-think--and think again--look into your Bible--look in Young--peep into your own breast--if your heart warrants--what your head counsels--act then boldly.--Oh! apropos--pray thank my noble friend Mrs. H--for her friendly present of C-- J--; it did Mrs. Sancho service, and does poor Billy great good--who has (through his teeth) been plagued with a cough--which I hope will not turn to the whooping sort;--the girls greet you as their respected school-master.--As to your spirited kind offer of a F----, why when you please--you know what I intend doing with it.
(I.xliii, pp. 119-22; pp. 84-6 in Carretta)",,21681,"","""Earth re-possesses part of what she gave--and the freed spirit mounts on wings of fire;--her disorder was a stoppage--she fell ill the evening of the Friday that I last saw her continued in her full senses to the last.""",Animals,2013-07-11 21:36:09 UTC,"Vol. I, letter xliii"