text,updated_at,metaphor,created_at,context,theme,reviewed_on,dictionary,comments,provenance,id,work_id
"To rise at noon, sit slipshod and undress'd,
To read the news, or fiddle, as seems best,
Till half the world comes rattling at his door,
To fill the dull vacuity till four;
And just when evening turns the blue vault grey,
To spend two hours in dressing for the day;
To make the Sun a bauble without use,
Save for the fruits his heavenly beams produce,
Quite to forget, or deem it worth no thought,
Who bids him shine, or if he shine or not;
Through mere necessity to close his eyes
Just when the larks and when the shepherds rise;
Is such a life, so tediously the same,
So void of all utility or aim,
That poor Jonquil with almost every breath
Sighs for his exit, vulgarly called death;
For he, with all his follies, has a mind
Not yet so blank, or fashionably blind,
But now and then perhaps a feeble ray
Of distant wisdom shoots across his way,
By which he reads, that life without a plan,
As useless as the moment it began,
Serves merely as a soil for discontent
To thrive in; an incumbrance ere half spent.
Oh weariness beyond what asses feel,
That tread the circuit of the cistern wheel;
A dull rotation, never at a stay,
Yesterday's face twin image of to-day;
While conversation, an exhausted stock,
Grows drowsy as the clicking of a clock.
No need, he cries, of gravity stuff'd out
With academic dignity devout,
To read wise lectures, vanity the text:
Proclaim the remedy, ye learned, next;
For truth self-evident with pomp impress'd
Is vanity surpassing all the rest.
(ll. 75-110, pp. 319-20)",2009-09-14 19:42:11 UTC,"One may have a mind ""Not yet so blank, or fashionably blind, / But now and then perhaps a feeble ray /Of distant wisdom shoots across his way""",2003-12-16 00:00:00 UTC,"","",,"","•I've included thrice: Blank, Blind, Ray
•Baird and Ryskamp suggest that ""Jonquil"" may come from Lady Winchilsea's ""The Spleen"": ""Now the Jonquille o'ercomes the feeble Brain; / We faint beneath the Aromatick Pain"" (ll. 40-1). Lines of interest in themselves (and echoed by Pope?).",Found again searching HDIS (Poetry),14884,5562
"According to Mr. Locke, the soul is a mere rasa tabula, an empty recipient, a mechanical blank. According to Plato, she is an ever-written tablet, a plenitude of forms, a vital and intellectual energy. On the former system, she is on a level with the most degraded natures, the receptacle of material species, and the spectator of delusion and non-entity. Hence, her energies are nothing but somnolent perceptions, and encumbered cogitations; of all her knowledge terminated in sense, and her science in passion. Like a man between sleeping and waking, her visions are turbid and confused, and the phantoms of a material night, continually glide before her drowsy eye. But on the latter system, the soul is the connecting medium of an intelligible and sensible nature, the bright repository of all middle forms, and the vigilant eye of all cogitative reasons. Hence she is capable of rousing herself from the sleep of a corporeal life, and emerging from this dark Cimmerian land, into the regions of light and reality. At first, indeed, before she is excited by science, she is oppressed with lethargy, and clouded with oblivion; but in proportion as learning and enquiry stimulate her dormant powers, she wakens from the dreams of ignorance, and opens her eye to the irradiations of wis- [end page xxxi] dom. On Mr. Locke's system, the principles of science and sense are the same, for the energies of both originate from material forms, on which they are continually employed. Hence, science is subject to the flowing and perishable nature of particulars; and if body and its attributes were destroyed, would be nothing but a name. But on the system of Plato, they differ as much as delusions and reality; for here the vital, permanent, and lucid nature of ideas is the fountain of science; and the inert, unstable, and obscure nature of sensible objects, the source of sensation. On Mr. Locke's system, body may be modified into thought, and become an intelligent creature; it may be subtilized into life, and shrink, by its exility, into intellect. On that of Plato, body can never alter its nature by modification, however, it may be rarefied and refined, varied by the transposition of its part, or tortured by the hand of experiment. In short, the two systems may be aptly represented by the two sections of a line, in Plato's Republic. In the ancient, you have truth itself, and whatever participates of the brightest evidence and reality: in the modern, ignorance, and whatever belongs to obscurity and shadow. The former fills the soul with intelligible light, breaks her lethargic fetters, and elevates her to the principle of things; the latter clouds the intellectual eye of the soul, by increasing her oblivion, strengthens her corporeal bands, and hurries her downwards into the dark labyrinths of matter.
(pp. xxxi-xxxii)",2009-09-14 19:43:04 UTC,"""At first, indeed, before she is excited by science, she is oppressed with lethargy, and clouded with oblivion; but in proportion as learning and enquiry stimulate her dormant powers, she wakens from the dreams of ignorance, and opens her eye to the irradiations of wisdom""",2006-10-13 00:00:00 UTC,"",Mind's Eye,,"",•Taylor seems like quite a character. See ODNB.
•I've included twice: Eye and Light,Searching in ECCO,15223,5705
"According to Mr. Locke, the soul is a mere rasa tabula, an empty recipient, a mechanical blank. According to Plato, she is an ever-written tablet, a plenitude of forms, a vital and intellectual energy. On the former system, she is on a level with the most degraded natures, the receptacle of material species, and the spectator of delusion and non-entity. Hence, her energies are nothing but somnolent perceptions, and encumbered cogitations; of all her knowledge terminated in sense, and her science in passion. Like a man between sleeping and waking, her visions are turbid and confused, and the phantoms of a material night, continually glide before her drowsy eye. But on the latter system, the soul is the connecting medium of an intelligible and sensible nature, the bright repository of all middle forms, and the vigilant eye of all cogitative reasons. Hence she is capable of rousing herself from the sleep of a corporeal life, and emerging from this dark Cimmerian land, into the regions of light and reality. At first, indeed, before she is excited by science, she is oppressed with lethargy, and clouded with oblivion; but in proportion as learning and enquiry stimulate her dormant powers, she wakens from the dreams of ignorance, and opens her eye to the irradiations of wis- [end page xxxi] dom. On Mr. Locke's system, the principles of science and sense are the same, for the energies of both originate from material forms, on which they are continually employed. Hence, science is subject to the flowing and perishable nature of particulars; and if body and its attributes were destroyed, would be nothing but a name. But on the system of Plato, they differ as much as delusions and reality; for here the vital, permanent, and lucid nature of ideas is the fountain of science; and the inert, unstable, and obscure nature of sensible objects, the source of sensation. On Mr. Locke's system, body may be modified into thought, and become an intelligent creature; it may be subtilized into life, and shrink, by its exility, into intellect. On that of Plato, body can never alter its nature by modification, however, it may be rarefied and refined, varied by the transposition of its part, or tortured by the hand of experiment. In short, the two systems may be aptly represented by the two sections of a line, in Plato's Republic. In the ancient, you have truth itself, and whatever participates of the brightest evidence and reality: in the modern, ignorance, and whatever belongs to obscurity and shadow. The former fills the soul with intelligible light, breaks her lethargic fetters, and elevates her to the principle of things; the latter clouds the intellectual eye of the soul, by increasing her oblivion, strengthens her corporeal bands, and hurries her downwards into the dark labyrinths of matter.
(pp. xxxi-xxxii)",2011-05-27 14:11:28 UTC,"""The former [Platonic philosophy] fills the soul with intelligible light, breaks her lethargic fetters, and elevates her to the principle of things; the latter [Lockean philosophy] clouds the intellectual eye of the soul, by increasing her oblivion, strengthens her corporeal bands, and hurries her downwards into the dark labyrinths of matter.""",2006-10-13 00:00:00 UTC,"","",2011-06-26,Fetters,"•Taylor seems like quite a character. See ODNB.
•I've included four times: Light, Fetters, Eye, Bands",Searching in ECCO,15226,5705
"Ye pale Inhabitants of Night,
Before my intellectual Sight
In solemn Pomp ascend:
O tell how trifling now appears
The Train of idle Hopes and Fears
That varying Life attend.
Ye faithless Idols of our Sense,
Here own how vain your fond Pretence,
Ye empty Names of Joy!
Your transient Forms like Shadows pass,
Frail Offspring of the magic Glass,
Before the mental Eye.
The dazzling Colours, falsely bright,
Attract the gazing vulgar Sight
With superficial State:
Thro' Reason's clearer Optics view'd,
How stript of all it's Pomp, how rude
Appears the painted Cheat.
(pp. 80-1)",2014-07-15 16:04:26 UTC,"Melancholy's ""transient Forms like Shadows pass, / Frail Offspring of the magic Glass, / Before the mental Eye.""",2011-06-23 04:17:33 UTC,"",Mind's Eye,,Mirror,"",Reading,18775,6964
"Vivaldi, meanwhile, had found an hospitable reception with the Benedictines, whose sequestered situation made the visit of a stranger a pleasurable novelty to them. In the eagerness of conversation, and, yielding to the satisfaction which the mind receives from exercising ideas that have long slept in dusky indolence, and to the pleasure of admitting new ones, the Abbot and a few of the brothers sat with Vivaldi to a late hour. When, at length, the traveller was suffered to retire, other subjects than those, which had interested his host, engaged his thoughts; and he revolved the means of preventing the misery that threatened him in a serious separation from Ellena. Now, that she was received into a respectable asylum, every motive for silence upon this topic was done away. He determined, therefore, that on the following morning, he would urge all his reasons and entreaties for an immediate marriage; and among the brothers of the Benedictine, he had little doubt of prevailing with one to solemnize the nuptials, which he believed would place his happiness and Ellena's peace, beyond the influence of malignant possibilities.
(II.ii, pp. 191-2)",2013-06-04 19:38:10 UTC,"""In the eagerness of conversation, and, yielding to the satisfaction which the mind receives from exercising ideas that have long slept in dusky indolence, and to the pleasure of admitting new ones, the Abbot and a few of the brothers sat with Vivaldi to a late hour.""",2013-06-04 19:38:10 UTC,"Vol. II, Chap. ii","",,"","",Reading,20326,6506
"While she raised her streaming eyes to heaven, she observed the same planet, which she had seen in Languedoc, on the night, preceding her father's death, rise above the eastern towers of the castle, while she remembered the conversation, which had passed, concerning the probable state of departed souls; remembered, also, the solemn music she had heard, and to which the tenderness of her spirits had, in spite of her reason, given a superstitious meaning. At these recollections she wept again, and continued musing, when suddenly the notes of sweet music passed on the air. A superstitious dread stole over her; she stood listening, for some moments, in trembling expectation, and then endeavoured to recollect her thoughts, and to reason herself into composure; but human reason cannot establish her laws on subjects, lost in the obscurity of imagination, any more than the eye can ascertain the form of objects, that only glimmer through the dimness of night.
(II, p. 310 in Penguin)",2014-03-06 03:11:44 UTC,"""A superstitious dread stole over her; she stood listening, for some moments, in trembling expectation, and then endeavoured to recollect her thoughts, and to reason herself into composure; but human reason cannot establish her laws on subjects, lost in the obscurity of imagination, any more than the eye can ascertain the form of objects, that only glimmer through the dimness of night.""",2014-03-06 03:11:44 UTC,"","",,"","",Reading,23510,5841