id,comments,provenance,dictionary,created_at,reviewed_on,work_id,theme,context,updated_at,metaphor,text
19545,"",Reading,"",2012-01-28 20:23:11 UTC,,3626,"","",2012-01-28 20:23:11 UTC,"""The fancy, memory, and judgment are then extended (like so many limbs) upon the rack; all of them reaching with their utmost stress at nature; a thing so almost infinite and boundless, as can never fully be comprehended, but where the images of all things are always present.""","[...] Plotting and writing in this kind, are certainly more troublesome employments than many which signify more, and are of greater moment in the world: The fancy, memory, and judgment are then extended (like so many limbs) upon the rack; all of them reaching with their utmost stress at nature; a thing so almost infinite and boundless, as can never fully be comprehended, but where the images of all things are always present. Yet I wonder not, your Lordship succeeds so well in this attempt: the knowledge of men is your daily practice in the world; to work and bend their stubborn minds, which go not all after the same grain, but each of them so particular a way, that the same common humours, in several persons, must be wrought upon by several means. Thus, my Lord, your sickness is but the imitation of your health; the poet but subordinate to the statesman in you: you still govern men with the same address, and manage business with the same prudence; allowing it here, as in the world, the due increase and growth, till it comes to the just height; and then turning it when it is fully ripe, and Nature calls out, as it were, to be delivered. With this only advantage of ease to you in your poetry, that you have fortune here at your command; with which, wisdom does often unsuccessfully struggle in the world. Here is no chance which you have not foreseen; all your heroes are more than your subjects, they are your creatures; and though they seem to move freely in all the sallies of their passions, yet you make destinies for them which they cannot shun. They are moved, if I may dare to say so, like the rational creatures of the Almighty Poet, who walk at liberty, in their own opinion, because their fetters are invincible, when indeed the prison of their will is the more sure for being large; and instead of an absolute power over their actions, they have only a wretched desire of doing that, which they cannot choose but do."
19546,"",Reading,"",2012-01-28 20:24:15 UTC,,3626,"","",2012-01-28 20:24:15 UTC,"""I can only say in general, that the souls of other men shine out at little crannies; they understand some one thing, perhaps to admiration, while they are darkened on all the other parts: but your Lordship's soul is an entire globe of light, breaking out on every side; and if I have only discovered one beam of it, 'tis not that the light falls unequally, but because the body which receives it, is of unequal parts.""","I have dwelt, my Lord, thus long upon your writing, not because you deserve not greater and more noble commendations, but because I am not equally able to express them in other subjects. Like an ill swimmer, I have willingly staid long in my own depth; and though I am eager of performing more, yet am loath to venture out beyond my knowledge: for beyond your poetry, my Lord, all is ocean to me. To speak of you as a soldier, or a statesman, were only to betray my own ignorance; and I could hope no better success from it, than that miserable rhetorician had, who solemnly declaimed before Hannibal, of the conduct of arms, and the art of war. I can only say in general, that the souls of other men shine out at little crannies; they understand some one thing, perhaps to admiration, while they are darkened on all the other parts: but your Lordship's soul is an entire globe of light, breaking out on every side; and if I have only discovered one beam of it, 'tis not that the light falls unequally, but because the body which receives it, is of unequal parts."
19817,"",Searching in HDIS (Drama),Beasts,2012-06-29 16:44:28 UTC,,7270,"",Act II,2012-06-29 16:45:15 UTC,"""'Tis so wild [Wildblood's heart], that the Lady who has it in her keeping, would be glad she were well rid on't: it does so flutter about the Cage. 'Tis a meer Bajazet; and if it be not let out the sooner, will beat out the brains against the Grates.""","JACINTHA.
What have you laid an ambush for me?
WILDBLOOD.
Only to make a Reprisal of my heart.
JACINTHA.
'Tis so wild, that the Lady who has it in her keeping, would be glad she were well rid on't: it does so flutter about the Cage. 'Tis a meer Bajazet; and if it be not let out the sooner, will beat out the brains against the Grates.
WILDBLOOD.
I am afraid the Lady has not fed it, and 'tis wild for hunger.
JACINTHA.
Or perhaps it wants company; shall she put another to it?
WILDBLOOD.
I; but then 'twere best to trust 'em out of the Cage together; let 'em hop about at libertie.
JACINTHA.
But if they should lose one another in the wide world.
WILDBLOOD.
They'll meet at night I warrant 'em.
JACINTHA.
But is not your heart of the nature of those Birds that breed in one Countrie, and goe to winter in another?
WILDBLOOD.
Suppose it does so; yet I take my Mate along with me. And now to leave our parables, and speak in the language of the vulgar, what think you of a voyage to merry England?
JACINTHA.
Just as Æsop's Frog did, of leaping into a deep Well in a drought: if he ventur'd the leap, there might be water; but if there were no water, how should he get out again?
(II)"