updated_at,id,text,theme,metaphor,work_id,reviewed_on,provenance,created_at,comments,context,dictionary
2012-01-09 16:41:52 UTC,9402,"Once by the Argive People (strange to tell!)
A Lute was heard, that did the Rocks compell
To follow, and the flying Stones to stand,
Fix'd into Walls. Touch'd by Amphion's Hand,
This rais'd the Theban Walls; while to the Skies
Flints, of themselves, in Heaps, congested, rise
T'enchanted Tow'rs. Another by his Lays
The Phocæ tam'd, becalm'd the raging Seas,
And Protheus drew through all his Shapes, and bore
Arion, on a Dolphin's Back, to Shore.
But that, whose Sound, in the Pelîack Cave,
A Bridle to the Minds of Heroes gave,
And great Achilles Thoughts, the Centaure lov'd,
And when, upon the Strings, his Finger mov'd,
Hell's, or the Ocean's Fury 'twould allay.
He Chaos, and the World, once wanting Day,
Or Light, a starless Lump; and then how God
Diffus'd the Waters of the Deep abroad,
And bound the Globe of Earth amidst the Frame;
How high Olympus to the Gods became,
By his appointment, a Secure Abode,
And chaster Age of Father Saturne shew'd.
But those sweet Nerves, by Orpheus touch'd, to whom
The Gods, and Shades below, did listning come,
Their Quill emerited, now shine among
The brightest Stars. His Mother his sweet Song
Admir'd, and her Aönian Sisters too;
His Musick the Pangæan Hills pursue.
Hemus, and farthest Thrace, Beasts, with their Woods,
Him follow, and the Mountains with their Floods;
Unmindefull of their Nests, Flight lai'd aside,
Birds, Captiv'd, in th'unshaken Air abide.
And, when the Pegasæan Ship (before
The Sons of Earth were skill'd beyond the Shore)
Refus'd the Sea to enter, by His Song,
Entic'd up to the Poop, the Waters throng.
He those pale Kingdoms, whither Ghosts retire,
And Acheron, that with Eternal Fire,
And Flames, still Ecchoes, by His Lays alone
Subdu'd, and fix'd the ever-rolling Stone.
Thus Teuthras, with His Thespian Lays their Hearts,
Hard'ned in War, to softer Ease diverts.","","""But that, whose Sound, in the Pelîack Cave, / A Bridle to the Minds of Heroes gave, / And great Achilles Thoughts, the Centaure lov'd, / And when, upon the Strings, his Finger mov'd, / Hell's, or the Ocean's Fury 'twould allay.""",3618,2012-01-09,Searching in HDIS (Poetry),2006-01-17 00:00:00 UTC,•Translated from Silius Italicus.,"",""
2012-01-28 20:00:55 UTC,9431,"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) ","","""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.""",3633,2012-01-28,"Reading. Found again in Margaret Doody's The Daring Muse: Augustan Poetry Reconsidered (Cambridge: CUP, 1985), 8. And again, Martin Kallich, ""The Association of Ideas and Critical Theory: Hobbes, Locke, and Addison"" ELH 12:4 (1945): 295n.
",2004-01-26 00:00:00 UTC,"•Dryden calls it a metaphor, but it looks like a simile to me! META-METAPHORICAL.
2008-12-03","",""
2009-09-14 19:34:20 UTC,9584,"MRS. LOVEIT
Horror and distraction seize you! Sorrow and remorse gnaw your soul and punish all your perjuries to me!
Weeps
DORIMANT [turning to Bellinda]
""So thunder breaks the cloud in twain.
And makes a passage for the rain.""
(Act II, scene ii, p. 100)","","""Sorrow and remorse gnaw [the] soul""",3700,,Reading,2003-07-23 00:00:00 UTC,"•Dorimant quotes Sidney's ""An Elegy ... for his Astrophel""",Mrs. Loveit is jealous of Dorimant's new masked lady and curses Dorimant,""
2010-01-13 20:38:13 UTC,17674,"2. Against a doubting conscience a man may not work but against a scrupulous he may. For a scrupulous conscience does not take away the proper determination of the understanding; but it is like a Woman handling of a Frog or a Chicken, which, all their friends tell them, can do them no hurt, and they are convinced in reason that they cannot, they believe it and know it ; and yet when they take the little creature into their hands, they shreek, and sometimes hold fast, and find their fears confuted, and sometimes they let go, and find their reason useless.
(p. 160)","","""For a scrupulous conscience does not take away the proper determination of the understanding; but it is like a Woman handling of a Frog or a Chicken, which, all their friends tell them, can do them no hurt, and they are convinced in reason that they cannot, they believe it and know it ; and yet when they take the little creature into their hands, they shreek, and sometimes hold fast, and find their fears confuted, and sometimes they let go, and find their reason useless.""",3617,,"Whitman, James Q. The origins of reasonable doubt: theological roots of the criminal trial. Yale UP, 2008. p. 179. <Link to Google Books>
",2010-01-13 20:37:45 UTC,"","Book I, Chapter 6, Rule II",""
2012-01-28 20:29:25 UTC,19547,"The advantages which rhyme has over blank verse, are so many, that it were lost time to name them. Sir Philip Sydney, in his Defence of Poesy, gives us one, which, in my opinion, is not the least considerable; I mean the help it brings to memory: which rhyme so knits up by the affinity of sounds, that by remembering the last word in one line, we often call to mind both the verses. Then in the quickness of repartees, which in discoursive scenes fall very often, it has so particular a grace, and is so aptly suited to them, that the sudden smartness of the answer, and the sweetness of the rhyme, set off the beauty of each other. But that benefit which I consider most in it, because I have not seldom found it, is, that it bounds and circumscribes the fancy: for imagination in a poet is a faculty so wild and lawless, that, like an high-ranging spaniel, it must have clogs tied to it, lest it outrun the judgment. The great easiness of blank verse renders the poet too luxuriant; he is tempted to say many things which might better be omitted, or at least shut up in fewer words: but when the difficulty of artful rhyming is interposed, where the poet commonly confines his sense to his couplet, and must contrive that sense into such words, that the rhyme, shall naturally follow them, not they the rhyme; the fancy then gives leisure to the judgment to come in; which seeing so heavy a tax imposed, is ready to cut off all unnecessary expences. This last consideration has already answered an objection which some have made; that rhyme is only an embroidery of sense, to make that which is ordinary in itself, pass for excellent with less examination. But certainly, that which most regulates the fancy, and gives the judgment its busiest employment, is like to bring forth the richest and clearest thoughts. The poet examines that most which he produceth with the greatest leisure, and which, he knows, must pass the severest test of the audience, because they are aptest to have it ever in their memory; as the stomach makes the best concoction, when it strictly embraces the nourishment, and takes account of every little particle as it passes through. But as the best medicines may lose their virtue by being ill applied, so is it with verse, if a fit subject be not chosen for it. Neither must the argument alone, but the characters and persons, be great and noble; otherwise (as Scaliger says of Claudian) the poet will be ignobiliore materia depressus. The scenes, which, in my opinion, most commend it, are those of argumentation and discourse, on the result of which the doing or not doing some considerable action should depend.","","""But that benefit which I consider most in it [rhyme], because I have not seldom found it, is, that it bounds and circumscribes the fancy: for imagination in a poet is a faculty so wild and lawless, that, like an high-ranging spaniel, it must have clogs tied to it, lest it outrun the judgment.""",3626,,"Reading Martin Kallich, ""The Association of Ideas and Critical Theory: Hobbes, Locke, and Addison"" ELH 12:4 (1945): 295n.",2012-01-28 20:25:39 UTC,"","",Fetters
2012-04-27 18:41:01 UTC,19728,"Nay, now forbear; for pity sake give o're,
You that would make the Clergy none, or poor:
We are made miserable enough this year,
That we have lost our Reverend Whitaker;
Loss above Deans and Chapters! had but he
Liv'd still and preach'd: Ziba take all (for me.)
Nay I believe had sacrilegious hands
Finger'd our poor remains of Tithes and Lands,
Whil'st he surviv'd they had but pray'd in vain,
Whitaker would have pray'd them back again,
As Luther did a young mans Soul repeal,
Giv'n to the Devil under Hand and Seal,
A Chariot and an Horseman we have lost,
In whose each single Pray'r incamp'd an Host.
How have I heard him on some solemn Day,
When doubtful War could make all London pray)
Mount up to Heav'n with armed cries and tears,
And rout, as far as York, the Cavaliers!
Have you not seen an early-rising Lark
Spring from her Turf, making the Sun her mark,
Shooting her self aloft, yet higher, higher,
Till she had sung her self into Heaven's Quire?
Thus would he rise in Pray'r, and in a trice
His Soul become a Bird of Paradise:
And if our faint Devotions Prayers be,
What can we call his less than Extasie?","","""Have you not seen an early-rising Lark / Spring from her Turf, making the Sun her mark, / Shooting her self aloft, yet higher, higher, / Till she had sung her self into Heaven's Quire? / Thus would he rise in Pray'r, and in a trice / His Soul become a Bird of Paradise.""",7233,,"Searching ""soul"" and ""bird"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2012-04-27 18:41:01 UTC,"","",Animals
2012-06-29 16:45:15 UTC,19817,"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)","","""'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.""",7270,,Searching in HDIS (Drama),2012-06-29 16:44:28 UTC,"",Act II,Beasts
2012-06-29 16:46:39 UTC,19818,"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)","","""But is not your heart of the nature of those Birds that breed in one Countrie, and goe to winter in another?""",7270,,"Searching ""heart"" and ""bird"" in HDIS (Drama)",2012-06-29 16:46:16 UTC,"Meta-metaphorical comment on the ""language of parable""",Act II,Beasts
2012-07-02 13:22:28 UTC,19831,"FREDERICK.
I hope I may love your mind, Madam; I may Love Spiritually.
HIPPOLITA.
That's enough, that's enough: let him love the mind without the body if he can.
ASCANIO.
Ay, ay, when the love is once come so far, that Spiritual Mind will never leave pulling, and pulling, till it has drawn the beastly body after it.
FREDERICK.
Well, Madam, since I must confess it, (though I expect to be laugh'd at, after my railing against Love) I do love you all over, both Soul and Body.
ASCANIO.
Lord, Sir, What a Tygress have you provok'd! you may see she takes it to the death that you have made this declaration.
(IV.iv)","","""Ay, ay, when the love is once come so far, that Spiritual Mind will never leave pulling, and pulling, till it has drawn the beastly body after it.""",7277,,"Searching ""mind"" and ""beast"" in HDIS (Drama)",2012-07-02 13:21:43 UTC,Like a stubborn animal on a leash?,"",Animals
2012-07-05 14:35:12 UTC,19866,"You happy Issue of a happy Wit,
As ever yet in charming numbers writ,
Welcom into the Light, and may we be
Worthy so happy a Posterity.
We long have wish'd for something Excellent;
But ne'r till now knew rightly what it meant:
For though we have been gratifi'd 'tis true,
From several hands with things both fine and new,
The Wits must pardon me, if I profess,
That till this time the over-teeming Press
Ne'r set out Poesie in so true a dress:
Nor is it all, to have a share of Wit,
There must be Judgment too to manage it;
For Fancy's like a rough, but ready Horse,
Whose mouth is govern'd more by skill than force;
Wherein (my Friend) you do a Maistry own,
If not particular to you alone;
Yet such at least as to all eyes declares
Your Pegasus the best performs his Ayres.
Your Muse can humour all her Subjects so,
That as we read we do both feel and know;
And the most firm impenetrable breast
With the same passion that you write's possest.
Your Lines are Rules, which who shall well observe
Shall even in their Errors praise deserve:
The boyling Youth, whose bloud is all on fire,
Push'd on by Vanity, and hot desire,
May learn such Conduct here, men may approve
And not excuse, but even applaud his Love.
Ovid, who made an ART of what to all
Is in it self but too too natural,
Had he but read your Verse, might then have seen
The Stile of which his Precepts should have been;
And (which it seems he knew not) learnt from thence
To reconcile Frailty with Innocence.
The Love you write, Virgins and Boys may read,
And never be debaucht but better bred;
For without Love, Beauty would bear no price,
And Dulness, than Desire's a greater vice:
Your greater Subjects with such force are writ
So full of sinewy Strength, as well as Wit,
That when you are Religious, our Divines
May emulate, but not reprove your Lines:
And when you reason, there the learned Crew
May learn to speculate, and speak from you.
You no prophane, no obscene language use
To smat your Paper, or defile your Muse.
Your gayest things, as well exprest, as meant
Are equally both Queint, and Innocent.
But your Pindarique Odes indeed are such
That Pindar's Lyre from his own skilful touch,
Ne're yielded such an Harmony, nor yet
Verse keep such time on so unequal feet.
So by his own generous confession
Great Tasso by Guarini was out-done:
And (which in Copying seldom does befal)
The Ectype's better than th' Original.
","","""For Fancy's like a rough, but ready Horse, / Whose mouth is govern'd more by skill than force; / Wherein (my Friend) you do a Maistry own, / If not particular to you alone; /Yet such at least as to all eyes declares /Your Pegasus the best performs his Ayres.""",7296,,"Searching ""fancy"" and ""horse"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2012-07-05 14:34:34 UTC,"","",Beasts