"Shall we, because we strive in vain to tell / How Matter acts on incorporeal Mind, / Or how, when sleep has lock'd up ev'ry sense, / Or fevers rage, Imagination paints / Unreal scenes, reject what sober sense, / And calmest thought attest?"
— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)
Author
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for J. Dodsley
Date
1767, 1784
Metaphor
"Shall we, because we strive in vain to tell / How Matter acts on incorporeal Mind, / Or how, when sleep has lock'd up ev'ry sense, / Or fevers rage, Imagination paints / Unreal scenes, reject what sober sense, / And calmest thought attest?"
Metaphor in Context
Requires there aught of learning's pompous aid
To prove that all this outward frame of things
Is what it seems, not unsubstantial air,
Ideal vision, or a waking dream,
Without existence, save what Fancy gives?
Shall we, because we strive in vain to tell
How Matter acts on incorporeal Mind,
Or how, when sleep has lock'd up ev'ry sense,
Or fevers rage, Imagination paints
Unreal scenes, reject what sober sense,
And calmest thought attest? Shall we confound
States wholly diff'rent? Sleep with wakeful life?
Disease with health? This were to quit the day,
And seek our path at midnight. To renounce
Man's surest evidence, and idolize
Imagination. Hence then banish we
These metaphysic subtleties, and mark
The curious structure of these visual orbs,
The windows of the mind; substance how clear,
Aqueous, or crystalline! through which the soul,
As thro' a glass, all outward things surveys.
To prove that all this outward frame of things
Is what it seems, not unsubstantial air,
Ideal vision, or a waking dream,
Without existence, save what Fancy gives?
Shall we, because we strive in vain to tell
How Matter acts on incorporeal Mind,
Or how, when sleep has lock'd up ev'ry sense,
Or fevers rage, Imagination paints
Unreal scenes, reject what sober sense,
And calmest thought attest? Shall we confound
States wholly diff'rent? Sleep with wakeful life?
Disease with health? This were to quit the day,
And seek our path at midnight. To renounce
Man's surest evidence, and idolize
Imagination. Hence then banish we
These metaphysic subtleties, and mark
The curious structure of these visual orbs,
The windows of the mind; substance how clear,
Aqueous, or crystalline! through which the soul,
As thro' a glass, all outward things surveys.
Provenance
Reading Marjorie Nicholson's Newton Demands the Muse (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1946), 152-153. Found again in Earl Wasserman, "The English Romantics: The Grounds of Knowledge"
4:1 Studies in Romanticism (Autumn, 1964): 17-34, 19.
Citation
At least 2 entries in ECCO and ESTC (1767, 1784).
See Edge-Hill, or, the Rural Prospect Delineated and Moralized. A Poem. In Four Books. By Richard Jago, A.M. (London: Printed for J. Dodsley, in Pall-Mall, 1767). <Link to ESTC>
Text from 2nd edition "Corrected and Enlarged," published in Poems, Moral and Descriptive. By the Late Richard Jago (London: Printed for J. Dodsley 1784). <Link to ECCO>
See Edge-Hill, or, the Rural Prospect Delineated and Moralized. A Poem. In Four Books. By Richard Jago, A.M. (London: Printed for J. Dodsley, in Pall-Mall, 1767). <Link to ESTC>
Text from 2nd edition "Corrected and Enlarged," published in Poems, Moral and Descriptive. By the Late Richard Jago (London: Printed for J. Dodsley 1784). <Link to ECCO>
Date of Entry
07/25/2014
