"Error that great Distemper of the Mind, / Hard to be cur'd, because 'tis hard to find; / So mixt and blended with our very Frame, / It lurks secure, and borrows Reason's Name."

— Paget, Thomas Catesby, Lord Paget (1689-1742)


Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed, and are to be sold by Fletcher Gyles
Date
1734 [1735?]
Metaphor
"Error that great Distemper of the Mind, / Hard to be cur'd, because 'tis hard to find; / So mixt and blended with our very Frame, / It lurks secure, and borrows Reason's Name."
Metaphor in Context
Error that great Distemper of the Mind,
Hard to be cur'd, because 'tis hard to find;
So mixt and blended with our very Frame,
It lurks secure, and borrows Reason's Name.

In diff'rent Persons diff'rent Ways it springs,
'Tis Factiousness in Subjects, Pride in Kings;
Boundless alike, they in Extremes agree,
These in Oppression, those in Anarchy;
Both aim at what is Ruin to obtain,
A civil Frenzy, or a Tyrant Reign.
(p. 6, ll. 149-158)
Provenance
Reading
Citation
At least 8 entries in LION, ECCO, and ESTC (1734, 1735, 1736, 1741, 1750, 1757, 1776, 1779).

See An Essay on Human Life. (London: Printed, and are to be sold by Fletcher Gyles over-against Grays Inn in Holborn, 1734). <Link to ESTC>

Text from An Essay on Human Life. By the Right Honourable the Lord Paget. The Third Edition. Corrected and Much Enlarg'd by the Author (Dublin and London: Printed, and Re-printed by George Faulkner, 1736). See also London printing of same year: <Link to Google Books>. And also Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (London: 1741).

Attributed to Pope and published in A Supplement to the Works of Alexander Pope, Esq. (1757) and Additions to the Works of Alexander Pope (1776). Excerpts in Roach's Beauties of the Poets (1793, 1794, 1795).
Date of Entry
11/17/2013

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.