"It must be painted with such circumstances as fill the mind with great and awful ideas."
— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London and Edinburgh
Publisher
Printed for W. Strahan; T. Cadell; and W. Creech
Date
1783
Metaphor
"It must be painted with such circumstances as fill the mind with great and awful ideas."
Metaphor in Context
A STORM or tempest, for instance, is a Sublime object in nature. But, to render it Sublime in description, it is not enough, either to give us mere general expressions concerning the violence of the tempest, or to describe its common, vulgar effects, in overthrowing trees and houses. It must be painted with such circumstances as fill the mind with great and awful ideas. This is very happily done by Virgil, in the following passage:
Ipse Pater, media nimborum in nocte, coruscâ
Fulmina molitur dextrâ; quo maxima motu
Terra tremit; fugere ferae; & mortalia corda,
Per gentes humilis stravit pavor: Ille, flagranti
Aut Atho, aut Rhodopen, aut alta Ceraunia telo
Dejicit*.—
GEORG. I.
(Vol. I, Lecture IV, pp. 83-4)
Ipse Pater, media nimborum in nocte, coruscâ
Fulmina molitur dextrâ; quo maxima motu
Terra tremit; fugere ferae; & mortalia corda,
Per gentes humilis stravit pavor: Ille, flagranti
Aut Atho, aut Rhodopen, aut alta Ceraunia telo
Dejicit*.—
GEORG. I.
(Vol. I, Lecture IV, pp. 83-4)
Categories
Provenance
ECCO-TCP
Citation
29 entries in ESTC (1783, 1784, 1787, 1788, 1789, 1790, 1793, 1796, 1798). See also Heads of the Lectures on Rhetorick, and Belles Lettres (1767, 1771, 1777) and abridgments of the lectures as Essays on Rhetoric (1784, 1785, 1787, 1789, 1793, 1797, 1798).
See Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. By Hugh Blair (London: Printed for W. Strahan; T. Cadell; and W. Creech, in Edinburgh, 1783): <Link to ESTC>. See also Dublin edition of same year in ECCO-TCP: <Link to Vol. I><Vol. II><Vol. III>. Revised and corrected for second edition of 1785.
Reading Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, eds. Linda Ferreira-Buckley and S. Michael Halloran (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2005). Text based on second edition of 1785.
See Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. By Hugh Blair (London: Printed for W. Strahan; T. Cadell; and W. Creech, in Edinburgh, 1783): <Link to ESTC>. See also Dublin edition of same year in ECCO-TCP: <Link to Vol. I><Vol. II><Vol. III>. Revised and corrected for second edition of 1785.
Reading Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, eds. Linda Ferreira-Buckley and S. Michael Halloran (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2005). Text based on second edition of 1785.
Date of Entry
11/18/2013
