"For every thing that is Majestick imprints an Awfulness and Reverence on the Mind of the Beholder, and strikes in with the Natural Greatness of the Soul."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)


Date
Thursday, June 26, 1712
Metaphor
"For every thing that is Majestick imprints an Awfulness and Reverence on the Mind of the Beholder, and strikes in with the Natural Greatness of the Soul."
Metaphor in Context
We are obliged to Devotion for the noblest Buildings that have adornd the several Countries of the World. It is this which has set Men at work on Temples and Publick Places of Worship, not only that they might, by the Magnificence of the Building, invite the Deity to reside within it, but that such stupendous Works might, at the same time, open the Mind to vast Conceptions, and fit it to converse with the Divinity of the Place. For every thing that is Majestick imprints an Awfulness and Reverence on the Mind of the Beholder, and strikes in with the Natural Greatness of the Soul.
(Cf. III, p. 555 in Bond ed.)
Provenance
Searching in Project Gutenberg (PGDP) e-text. Confirmed in Bond.
Citation
At least 80 entries in ESTC (1711, 1712, 1713, 1714, 1715, 1716, 1717, 1718, 1720, 1721, 1723, 1724, 1726, 1729, 1733, 1734, 1735, 1737, 1738, 1744, 1745, 1747, 1748, 1749, 1750, 1753, 1754, 1755, 1756, 1756, 1757, 1761, 1763, 1765, 1766, 1767, 1769, 1771, 1776, 1778, 1785, 1788, 1789, 1781, 1793, 1797, 1799, 1800).

By Steele, Addison, Budgell and others, The Spectator (London: Printed for Sam. Buckley, at the Dolphin in Little Britain; and sold by A[nn]. Baldwin in Warwick-Lane, 1711-1714). <Link to ESTC> -- No. 1 (Thursday, March 1. 1711) through No. 555 (Saturday, December 6. 1712); 2nd series, No. 556 (Friday, June 18. 1714), ceased with No. 635 (20 Dec. 1714).

Some text from The Spectator, 3 vols. Ed. Henry Morley (London: George Routledge, 1891). <Link to PGDP edition>

Reading in Donald Bond's edition: The Spectator, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965).
Date of Entry
06/06/2014

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