Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Alma: Or, The Progress of the Mind.

London

Jacob Tonson and John Barber

1718

Were it not for the Optic Nerves, the eyes might conspire the ruin of the mind: "That They shou'd see and She be blind."

Without these Aids, to be more serious,
Her Pow'r, They hold, had been precarious:
The Eyes might have conspir'd her Ruin;
And She not known, what They were doing.
Foolish it had been, and unkind,
That They shou'd see, and She be blind.
(p. 471, ll. 42-7)

Body::Vision::Blindness

HDIS

Searching in ECCO and ESTC (1718, 1720, 1721, 1725, 1728, 1733, 1734, 1741, 1751, 1754, 1755, 1759, 1768, 1766, 1767, 1769, 1771, 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779, 1784, 1790, 1798). See also Prior's Poetical Works (1777, 1779, 1784, 1798). Found in A Collection of English Poets, vol. 10 (1776), The British Poets, vol. 18 (1778), and The Works of the English Poets (1779, 1790). I haven't yet been able to confirm that Alma is in 2 vol. Poems of 1755, 1766, 1767 (texts not available in ECCO).

See Prior's Alma: Or, The Progress of the Mind. In Three Cantos published in Poems on Several Occasions (London: Printed for J. Tonson and J. Barber, 1718). <Link to ECCO>

Searching text from Poems on Several Occasions, ed. A. R. Waller (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1905). Reading The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, ed. H. Bunker Wright and Monroe K. Spears. 2 vols. 2nd Edition (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971).

02/27/2004

01/23/2009