work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5201,"Horace, Book I, Ode iii","Searching ""heart"" and ""brass"" in HDIS (Drama)",2005-06-03 00:00:00 UTC,"Bold was the man, and fenc'd in ev'ry part
With oak, and ten-fold brass about the heart,
To build a play who tortur'd first his brain,
And then dar'd launch it on this stormy main.
What tho', at first, he spreads his little sails
To Heav'n's indulgent and propitious gales,
As the land gradual lessens to his eye
He finds a troubled sea, and low'ring sky:
Envy, detraction, calumny, and spite,
Raise a worse storm than when the winds unite.
Around his bark, in many a dang'rous shoal,
Those monsters of the deep, the critics, prowl.
""She's a weak vessel, for these seas unfit,
""And has on board her not a spice of wit:
""She's French-built too; of foreign make,"" they cry;
Like geese still cackling that the Gauls are nigh.
If thrown on rocks by the hoarse dashing wave,
Th' unhappy crew no hand is stretch'd to save;
But round the wreck, like Moors, with furious joy,
The witlings crowd--to murder and destroy.
These are known dangers; and, still full as certain,
The bard meets other ills behind the curtain.
Little you think, ere yet you fix his fate,
What previous mischiefs there in ambush wait;
What plagues arise from all the mimic throng:
""My part's too short;--and, Sir, my part's too long.""
This calls for incident; that repartee.
""Down the back-stairs pen an escape for me.
""Give me a ladder, Mr. Bayes, of rope;
""I love to wear the breeches, and elope.
""Something for me the groundlings ears to split.
""Write a dark closet, or a fainting-fit.
""Fix Woodward in some whimsical disgrace:
""Or be facetious with Ned Shuter's face.""
This is our way; and yet our bard to night
Removes each obstacle, and springs to light.
Some scenes, we hope, he brings to nature true;
Some gleams of humour, and a moral too;
But no strange monsters offers to your view:
No forms, grotesque and wild, are here at strife:
He boasts an etching from the real life;
Exerts his efforts, in a polish'd age,
To drive the Smithfield muses from the stage;
By easy dialogue would win your praise,
And on fair decency graft all his bayes.",,14009,"•Murphy's translation of Voltaire's play. First performed 9 January 1764.
•Cross-reference: Horace's Book I, Ode iii. See Brown, Oldisworth, Ramsay, etc.
•I've included twice: Oak and Brass","""Bold was the man, and fenc'd in ev'ry part /With oak, and ten-fold brass about the heart, / To build a play who tortur'd first his brain, / And then dar'd launch it on this stormy main.""","",2009-09-14 19:39:43 UTC,Prologue
5229,"",Reading,2005-06-01 00:00:00 UTC,"THEO.
The mind is capable not merely of knowing them, but also of finding them within itself. If all it had was the mere capacity to receive those items of knowledge--a passive power to do so, as indeterminate as the power of wax to receive shapes or of a blank page to receive words--it would not be the source of necessary truths, as I have just shown that it is. For it cannot be denied that the senses are inadequate to show their necessity, and that therefore the mind has a disposition (as much active as passive) to draw them from its own depths; thoughthe senses are necessary to give the mind the opportunity and the attention for this, and to direct it towards certain necessary truths rather than others. So you see, sir, that these people who hold a different view, able though they are, have apparently failed to think through the implications of the distinction between necessary or eternal truths and truths of experience. I said this before, and our entire debate confirms it. The fundamental proof of necessary truths comes from the understanding alone, and other truths come from experience fo from observations of the senses. Our mind is capable of knowing truths of both sorts, but it is the source of the former; and however often one experienced instances of universal truth, one could never know inductively that it would always hold unless one knew through reason that it was necessary.
(pp. 79-80)",,14081,"•I.i.5. Whether there are Innate Principles
I've included twice: Wax and Blank Page","""If all [the mind] had was the mere capacity to receive those items of knowledge--a passive power to do so, as indeterminate as the power of wax to receive shapes or of a blank page to receive words--it would not be the source of necessary truths""",Impression,2013-10-13 19:00:07 UTC,""
5538,"",Reading J. P. van Noppen's Transforming Words (121). ,2005-06-27 00:00:00 UTC,"Humans are figured as ""breathing clods"" of earth shaped by the Potter/Creator: ""My Potter stamp on me thy clay, Thy only stamp of love!"" ",,14810,•I've included twice: Clay and Stamping,"""My Potter stamp on me thy clay, Thy only stamp of love!"" ",Impression,2009-09-14 19:41:59 UTC,""
5686,"","Searching ""sterling"" and ""heart"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-06-03 00:00:00 UTC,"Of coarser form, with less pathetic charms,
Hating with Stoic pride a tyrant's arms,
In the keen fervour of that florid time
When youthful Fancy pours her hasty rhyme,
When all the mind's luxuriant shoots appear,
Untrimm'd by Art, by Interest, or Fear,
See daring Lucan for that wreath contend,
Which Freedom twines for her poetic friend.
'Tis thine, thou bold but injur'd Bard, 'tis thine!
Tho' Critic spleen insult thy rougher line;
Tho' wrong'd thy Genius, and thy Name misplac'd
By vain distinctions of fastidious Taste;
Indignant Freedom, with just anger fir'd,
Shall guard the Poet whom herself inspir'd.
What tho' thy early, uncorrected page
Betrays some marks of a degenerate age;
Tho' many a tumid point thy verse contains,
Like warts projecting from Herculean veins;
Tho' like thy Cato thy stern Muse appear,
Her manners rigid, and her frown austere;
Like him, still breathing Freedom's genuine flame,
Justice her idol, Public Good her aim,
Well she supplies her want of softer art
By all the sterling treasures of the heart;
By Energy, from Independance caught,
And the free Vigour of unborrow'd Thought.
Thou Bard most injur'd by malicious fate,
Could not thy Blood appease a tyrant's hate?
Must He, still gall'd by thy poetic claim,
With falshood persecute thy moral fame?
Shall History's pen, to aid his vengeance won,
Brand thee, brave Spirit! as an impious Son,
Who meanly fear'd to yield his vital flood,
And sought his safety by a Parent's blood?
Base calumny, at which Belief must halt,
And blind Credulity herself revolt.
Could that firm Youth become so vile a slave,
Whose voice new energy to virtue gave;
Whose Stoic soul all abject thoughts abhorr'd,
And own'd no sordid passion as its lord;
Who in the trying hour of mortal pain,
While life was ebbing from his open vein,
Alike unconscious of Remorse and Fear,
His heart unshaken, and his senses clear,
Smil'd on his doom, and, like the fabled bird
Whose music on Meander's bank was heard,
Form'd into tuneful notes his parting breath,
And sung th' approaches of undreaded death?
Rise, thou wrong'd Bard! above Detraction's reach,
Whose arts in vain thy various worth impeach;
Enjoy that fame thy spirit knew to prize,
And view'd so fondly with prophetic eyes.
Tho' the nice Critics of fastidious France
Survey thy Song with many a scornful glance,
And as a Goth the kinder judge accuse,
Who with their great Corneille commends thy Muse,
Let Britain, eager as the Lesbian State
To shield thy Pompey from the wrongs of Fate,
To thee with pride a fond attachment show,
Thou Bard of Freedom! tho' the world's thy foe.
As keenly sensible of Beauty's sway,
Let our just isle such generous honour pay
To the fair partner of thy hapless life,
As Lesbos paid to Pompey's lovely Wife.
Ye feeling Painters, who with genius warm
Delineate Virtue in her softest form,
Let Argentaria on your canvass shine,
A graceful mourner at her Poet's shrine;
For, nobly fearless of the Tyrant's hate,
She mourns her murder'd Bard in solemn state;
With pious care she decks his splendid tomb,
Where the dark Cypress sheds its soothing gloom,
There frequent takes her solitary stand,
His dear Pharsalia in her faithful hand;
That hand, whose toil the Muses still rehearse,
Which fondly copied his unfinish'd Verse.
See, as she bends before his recent urn,
See tender Grief to Adoration turn!
O lovely Mourner! could my Song bestow
Unfading glory on thy generous woe,
Age after age thy virtue should record,
And thou should'st live immortal as thy Lord.
Him Liberty shall crown with endless praise,
True to her cause in Rome's degenerate days;
Him, like his Brutus, her fond eye regards,
And hails him as the last of Roman Bards.",,15194,"","The Muse, like Cato, ""Well [...] supplies her want of softer art / By all the sterling treasures of the heart.""",Metal,2013-06-11 18:45:40 UTC,""
6805,"",Reading,2011-03-08 21:18:53 UTC,"But admitting a spiritual substance to be dispersed throughout the universe, like the ethereal fire of the Stoics, and to be the only inherent subject of thought, we have reason to conclude from analogy, that nature uses it after the same manner she does the other substance, matter. She employs it as a kind of paste or clay; modifies it into a variety of forms and existences; dissolves after a time each modification, and from its substance erects a new form. As the same material substance may successively compose the bodies of all animals, the same spiritual substance may compose their minds: Their consciousness, or that system of thought, which they formed during life, may be continually dissolved by death; and nothing interests them in the new modification. The most positive assertors of the mortality of the soul, never denied the immortality of its substance. And that an immaterial substance, as well as a material, may lose its memory or consciousness, appears, in part, from experience, if the soul be immaterial.
(p. 591)",,18233,"","""She [Nature] employs it [spiritual substance] as a kind of paste or clay; modifies it into a variety of forms and existences; dissolves after a time each modification, and from its substance erects a new form.""","",2011-03-08 21:18:53 UTC,""
7544,"",Google Books,2013-07-14 04:49:37 UTC,"But, pray, let us leave these subtilties, and confine ourselves to observation. This may teach us, indeed, that there are characters which are known almost at the birth, and children that may be studied at the breast of their nurse: but these are of a particular class, and receive their education in beginning to live. As for others, who are later known, to attempt to form their genius before their characters are distinguished, is to run a risque of spoiling what is good in their natural dispositions, and substituting what is worse in its place. Did not your master Plato maintain, that all the art of man, that all philosophy could not extract from the human mind what nature had not implanted there; as all the operations in chemistry are incapable of extracting from any mixture more gold than is already contained in it? This is not true of our sentiments or our ideas; but it is true of our disposition or capacity of acquiring them. To change the genius, one must be able to change the interior organization of the body; to change a character, one must be capable of changing the temperament on which it depends. Have you ever heard of a passionate man's becoming patient and temperate, or of a frigid methodical genius having acquired a spirited imagination? For my own part, I think it would be just as easy to make a fair man brown, or a blockhead a man of sense. 'Tis in vain then to attempt to model different minds by one common standard. One may restrain, but we can never change them: one may hinder men from appearing what they are, but can never make them really otherwise; and, though they disguise their sentiments in the ordinary commerce of life, you will see them re-assume their real characters on every important occasion. Besides, our business is not to change the character, and alter the natural disposition of the mind, but, on the contrary, to improve and prevent its degenerating; for by these means it is, that a man becomes what he is capable of being, and that the work of nature is compleated by education. Now, before any character can be cultivated, it is necessary that it should be studied; that we should patiently wait its opening; that we should furnish occasions for it to display itself; and that we should forbear doing any thing, rather than doing wrong. To one genius it is necessary to give wings, and to another shackles; one should be spurred forward, another reined in; one should be encouraged, another intimidated; sometimes it should be checked, and at others assisted. One man is formed to extend human knowlege to the highest degree; to another it is even dangerous to learn to read. Let us wait for the opening of reason; it is that which displays the character, and gives it its true form: it is by that also it is cultivated, and there is no such thing as education before the understanding is ripe for instruction.
(III, pp. 265-6)",,21750,"","""Did not your master Plato maintain, that all the art of man, that all philosophy could not extract from the human mind what nature had not implanted there; as all the operations in chemistry are incapable of extracting from any mixture more gold than is already contained in it?""","",2013-07-14 04:49:37 UTC,""
7566,"",Reading at Project Gutenberg and Google Books,2013-07-25 14:09:36 UTC,"In order to encourage you to imitation, to the utmost extent, let me add, that very finished Artists in the inferior branches of the art, will contribute to furnish the mind and give hints, of which a skilful painter, who is sensible of what he wants, and is in no danger of being infected by the contact of vicious models, will know how to avail himself. He will pick up from dunghills what by a nice chymistry, passing through his own mind, shall be converted into pure gold; and, under the rudeness of Gothic essays, he will find original, rational, and even sublime inventions.
(p. 28, p. 237 in 1778 edition)
",,22052,"Deleted earlier entry, reconciling title/date: Record created on 2011-02-20 20:41:28 UTC
Record last updated on 2011-05-14 21:03:20 UTC","""He will pick up from dunghills what by a nice chymistry, passing through his own mind, shall be converted into pure gold; and, under the rudeness of Gothic essays, he will find original, rational, and even sublime inventions.""",Metal,2013-07-25 14:09:36 UTC,""
7669,"","",2013-09-04 02:15:04 UTC,"CICERO.
Daughter, I've look'd into the hearts of men,
And trac'd the shifting passions, as they turn
To opposite extremes; there I have mark'd,
When Envy keeps the throne, 'tis Hell within us:
Soon as the guilty passion is allay'd,
The green and morbid colour of our souls
Is chang'd to virgin white; a gentle breeze
Of pity springs within us; with fond sorrow
Upon our prostrate rival we look down,
And mourn our own success.
(p. 76)",,22687,"","""Soon as the guilty passion is allay'd, / The green and morbid colour of our souls / Is chang'd to virgin white; a gentle breeze / Of pity springs within us.""",Metal,2013-09-04 02:15:04 UTC,""
5301,"",Searching in LION,2013-10-26 19:42:43 UTC,"Yes--and then--Ye whose clay-cold heads and luke-warm hearts can argue down or mask your passions, tell me, what trespass is it that man should have them? or how his spirit stands answerable to the father of spirits, but for his conduct under them?
(II. p. 100)",,23064,"","""Ye whose clay-cold heads and luke-warm hearts can argue down or mask your passions, tell me, what trespass is it that man should have them?""","",2013-10-26 19:42:43 UTC,""
7858,"",ECCO-TCP,2014-03-16 16:58:26 UTC,"Ingratitude, it is justly observed, is a crime of Syrian dye; but alas! it is a crime from which very few of the human race can plead an exemption; particularly to that supreme Being whose mercies to us demand our most animated gratitude! while in the meridian of health and prosperity we neglect those great duties we ought to perform, and which, when descended under the clouded horizon of sickness and adversity, we cannot perform. It is in this state the mind resumes its salutary attribute of reflection--It is then she would wish, by a life of prudence and penance in future, to ward off calamities which antecedent intemperance or impiety make her dread for the present, both as to body and soul! When the human mind is in this susceptible disposition, a wise and humane clergyman should avail himself of its situation (as in it we are more inclined to hear and follow good advice than at any other time) by visiting patients in such situations, and admonishing them to refrain from a repetition of those irregularities, which perhaps laid the foundation of their present sickness; and that such sickness was the consequent punishment, of their criminal neglect of the performance of their religious duty:"" or in any other pathetic manner, that the love or duty of Christianity might dictate.--For, as the state of heat, in metallic substances, is the state wherein they are made capable to assume new or beautiful forms, so the state of affliction is the state to mould the human mind to every pursuit that is congenial to the dignity of its nature. But, I am extremely sorry to say, that there is very little attention paid to the discharge of this indispensible duty in an hospital; more especially at the time that it is most necessary, towards the approach of death!--For, it is truly lamentable to see, how shamefully negligent in this momentous concern, are the people about an expiring wretch in an hospital-- to whom custom, joined to innate insensibility, has made it as indifferent to see a patient leaving the world, as leaving the hospital! This conduct is not only inhuman, but impious in the highest degree; as at this awful tremendous moment, desponding fears and infidel doubts find an easy conquest of a mind, which, though not strengthened by Christian philosophy, is considerably weakened by disease. This, therefore, is the time to administer to the exhausted mind the lenient balsam of Christianity, by infusing into the anxious, trembling, palpitating soul a conviction, a hope, and a belief of its divine and merciful author's protection in a future state! I would not dwell so long on this matter, but from an internal conviction, that virtue and good morals are as often the means of preserving health, as medicine is in restoring it. A proper method of treating the minds and morals of patients shall be pointed out hereafter in its place; that is, immediately after suggesting a plan for the removal or mitigation of all the antecedent bodily inconveniencies alluded to.
(pp. 28-30)",,23745,"","""For, as the state of heat, in metallic substances, is the state wherein they are made capable to assume new or beautiful forms, so the state of affliction is the state to mould the human mind to every pursuit that is congenial to the dignity of its nature.""",Metal,2014-03-16 16:58:26 UTC,""