Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

[Rasselas] The Prince of Abissinia. A Tale in Two Volumes

London

Printed for R. and J. Dodsley; and W. Johnston

1759

"To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation."

"To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation. When we are alone we are not always busy; the labour of excogitation is too violent to last long; the ardour of enquiry will sometimes give way to idleness or satiety. He who has nothing external that can divert him, must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is? He then expatiates in boundless futurity, and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the present moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combinations, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow.

Animals::Wing

Reading Susan C. Greenfield's "Money or Mind? Cecilia, the Novel, and the Real Madness of Selfhood" in SECC Vol. 33. p. 54.

At least 37 entries in the ESTC (1759, 1760, 1766, 1768, 1775, 1777, 1783, 1785, 1786, 1787, 1789, 1790, 1791, 1792, 1793, 1794, 1795, 1796, 1798, 1799, 1800).

See The Prince of Abissinia. A Tale. In Two Volumes. (London: Printed for R. and J. Dodsley; and W. Johnston, 1759). <Link to ESTC> <Link to Jack Lynch's online edition>

Reading The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, ed. Thomas Keymer (Oxford: OUP, 2009).

07/21/2005

05/23/2011