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"Those inimitably beautiful chorus's to Shakespear's Harry the fifth, where he desires his audience to play with their fancies, and to suffer him to bear them on the lofty wings of his own sublime imagination, over the expanded ocean to different countries and distant climates, we should have thought might have warm'd the morosest cynic into a taste of pleasure, and have baffled the ill-humour of the severest critic."

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Author

Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Work Title

The Cry: A New Dramatic Fable

Place of Publication

London

Publisher

Printed for R. and J. Dodsley in Pall Mall

Date

1754

Metaphor

"Those inimitably beautiful chorus's to Shakespear's Harry the fifth, where he desires his audience to play with their fancies, and to suffer him to bear them on the lofty wings of his own sublime imagination, over the expanded ocean to different countries and distant climates, we should have thought might have warm'd the morosest cynic into a taste of pleasure, and have baffled the ill-humour of the severest critic."

Metaphor in Context

Those inimitably beautiful chorus's to Shakespear's Harry the fifth, where he desires his audience to play with their fancies, and to suffer him to bear them on the lofty wings of his own sublime imagination, over the expanded ocean to different countries and distant climates, we should have thought might have warm'd the morosest cynic into a taste of pleasure, and have baffled the ill-humour of the severest critic. And yet we once remember in a conversation, to have heard a gentleman treat these very chorus's, as if he had been examining an evidence in a court of justice; and then gravely (we will not say dully) pronouncing sentence, that they were contrary to all form and order, and only the wild reveries of an unbridled imagination. On such Critics justly may one say with Terence;

Faciunt næ intelligendo, ut nihil intelligant.
(Introduction, p. 3)