Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

The Citizen of the World

London

Printed for the Author

1760-1761, 1762

"Fancy restrained may be compared to a fountain which plays highest by diminishing the aperture."

From this then it appears that poetry is not discontinued, but altered among the English at present; the outward form seems different from what it was, but poetry still continues internally the same; the only question remains whether the metric feet used by the good writers of the last age, or the prosaic numbers employed by the good writers of this, be preferable. And here the practice of the last age appears to me superior; they submitted to the restraint of numbers and similar sounds; and this restraint, instead of diminishing, augmented the force of their sentiment and stile. Fancy restrained may be compared to a fountain which plays highest by diminishing the aperture. Of the truth of this maxim in every language, every fine writer is perfectly sensible from his own experience, and yet to explain the reason would be perhaps as difficult as to make a frigid genius profit by the discovery.
(I, pp. 170-171)

Liquid::Fountain

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First published in the Public Ledger in 1760-1761. At least 25 entries in ESTC (1762, 1769, 1774, 1775 1776, 1782, 1785, 1790, 1792, 1793, 1794, 1797, 1799, 1800).



Text from The Citizen of the World: or Letters from a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to His Friends in the East. (London: Printed for the Author; and sold by J. Newbery and W. Bristow; J. Leake and W. Frederick, Bath; B. Collins, Salisbury; and A. M. Smart and Co. Reading, 1762). <Link to ECCO-TCP>

07/25/2014