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 the mind, as to the eye, it is difficult to compare with exactness objects vast in their extent, and various in their parts."

"I did not expect, answered the princess, to hear that imputed to falshood which is the consequence only of frailty. To the mind, as to the eye, it is difficult to compare with exactness objects vast in their extent, and various in their parts. Where we see or conceive the whole at once we readily note the discriminations and decide the preference: but of two systems, of which neither can be surveyed by any human being in its full compass of magnitude and multiplicity of complication, where is the wonder, that judging of the whole by parts, I am affected by one or the other as either presses on my memory or fancy? We differ from ourselves just as we differ from each other, when we see only part of the question, as in the multifarious relations of politicks and morality: but when we perceive the whole at once, as in numerical computations, all agree in one judgment, and none ever varies his opinion."

Body::Eye

Searching "mind" and "eye" in HDIS (Prose)

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).

04/21/2006

08/14/2009