"To paint things as they are requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy."
— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Author
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Bathurst, J. Buckland, W. Strahan, J. Rivington and Sons, T. Davies
Date
1779, 1781
Metaphor
"To paint things as they are requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy."
Metaphor in Context
The appearances of nature and the occurrences of life did not satiate his appetite of greatness. To paint things as they are requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy. Milton's delight was to sport in the wide regions of possibility; reality was a scene too narrow for his mind. He sent his faculties out upon discovery, into worlds where only imagination can travel, and delighted to form new modes of existence, and furnish sentiment and action to superior beings, to trace the counsels of hell, or accompany the choirs of heaven.
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
At least 3 entries in ESTC (1779, 1781, 1790). [vols. 1 to 5 dates 1779, vols. 5 to 10, 1781)
Samuel Johnson, Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets, vol. 2 (London: Bathurst et al., 1779). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO>
Text from Jack Lynch's online edition, based on G. B. Hill's Lives of the English Poets, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905). <Link>
Samuel Johnson, Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets, vol. 2 (London: Bathurst et al., 1779). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO>
Text from Jack Lynch's online edition, based on G. B. Hill's Lives of the English Poets, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905). <Link>
Date of Entry
03/04/2009
