work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
3585,"","Searching ""mind"" and ""line"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-05-11 00:00:00 UTC,"""A Prince that in the Cedars top doth build,
""And scornes the Sun, and dallies with the Wind,
""Only a Title hath his care to gild,
""His gay robe's lined with a restlesse mind.
""They that stand high have many blasts to shake them,
""And falling from on high, the more they break them.",2008-12-03,9274,"","""His gay robe's lined with a restlesse mind""","",2009-09-14 19:34:05 UTC,""
3633,Dress of Thought,"",2008-12-03 00:00:00 UTC,"The composition of all poems is or ought to be of wit, and wit in the poet, or wit writing (if you will give me leave to use a school distinction), is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer, which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges through the field of memory, till it springs the quarry it hunted after; or, without metaphor, which searches over all the memory for the species or ideas of those things which it designs to represent. Wit written, is that which is well defined the happy result of thought, or product of that imagination. But to proceed from wit in the general notion of it to the proper wit of an heroic or historical poem, I judge it chiefly to consist in the delightful imaging of persons, actions, passions, or things.'Tis not the jerk or sting of an epigram, nor the seeming contradiction of a poor antithesis (the delight of an ill-judging audience in a play of rhyme), nor the jingle of a more poor paranomasia: neither is it so much the morality of a grave sentence, affected by Lucan, but more sparingly used by Virgil; but it is some lively and apt description, dressed in such colours of speech, that it sets before youre eyes the absent object as perfectly and more delightfully than nature. so then, the first happiness of the poet's imagination is properly invention, or finding of the thought; the second is fancy or the variation, driving or moulding of that thought, as the judgement represents it proper to the subject; the third is elocution, or that art of clothing and adorning that thought so found and varied, in apt, significant, and sounding words: the quickness of the imagination is seen in the invention, the fertility in the fancy, and the accuracy in the expression. For the two first of these Ovid is famous amongst the poets, for the latter Virgil. Ovid images more often the movements and affections of the mind, either combating between two contrary passions, or extremely discomposed by one: his words therefore are the least part of his care, for he pictures nature in disorder, with which the study and choice of words is inconsistent. This is the proper wit of dialogue or discourse, and consequently, of the drama, where all that is said is to be supposed the effect of sudden thought; which, though it excludes not the quickness of wit in repartees, yet admits not a too curious election of words, too frequent allusions, or use of tropes, or, in fine, anything that shows remoteness of thought, or labour in the writer. On the other side, Virgil speaks not so often to us in the person of another, like Ovid, but in his own; he relates almost all things as from himself, and thereby gains more liberty than the other to express his thoughts with all the graces of elocution, to write more figuratively, and to confess as well the labour as the force of his imagination.
(pp. 26-7 in Walker's edition) ",2008-12-03,17190,"","Elocution is "" that art of clothing and adorning that thought so found and varied, in apt, significant, and sounding word.""","",2009-09-14 19:49:20 UTC,Reading
6481,"",Reading,2009-02-14 00:00:00 UTC,"
The not observing this rule is that which the world has blamed in our satyrist, Cleveland: to express a thing hard and unnaturally, is his new way of elocution. 'Tis true, no poet but may sometimes use a catachresis: Virgil does it--
Mistaque ridenti colocasia fundet acantho--""in his eclogue of Pollio; and in his seventh
mirantur et undae, ----Miratur nemus insuetum fulgentia longe ?Scuta virum fluvio pictasque innare carinas.
And Ovid once so modestly, that he asks leave to do it:
----quern, si verbo audacia detur, Hand metuam summi dixisse Palatia cali.
calling the court of Jupiter by the name of Augustus his palace; though in another place he is more bold, where he says,--et longas visent Capitolia pampas. But to do this always, and never be able to write a line without it, though it may be admired by some few pedants, will not pass upon those who know that wit is best conveyed to us in the most easy language; and is most to be admired when a great thought comes dressed in words so commonly received, that it is understood by the meanest apprehensions, as the best meat is the most easily digested: but we cannot read a verse of Cleveland's without making a face at it, as if every word were a pill to swallow: he gives us many times a hard nut to break our teeth, without a kernel for our pains. So that there is this difference betwixt his Satires and doctor Donne's; that the one gives us deep thoughts in common language, though rough cadence; the other gives us common thoughts in abstruse words: 'tis true, in some places his wit is independent of his words, as in that of the rebel Scot:
Had Cain been Scot, God would have chang'd his doom; Not forc'd him wander, but confin'd him home.
",,17246,I've included twice: Dress and Meat,"""But to do this always, and never be able to write a line without it, though it may be admired by some few pedants, will not pass upon those who know that wit is best conveyed to us in the most easy language; and is most to be admired when a great thought comes dressed in words so commonly received, that it is understood by the meanest apprehensions, as the best meat is the most easily digested.""",Dress,2009-09-14 19:49:34 UTC,"" 7163,"",Reading ,2014-05-26 20:23:16 UTC,"For thus old Saws foretel, and Helenus