Date: 1754
"But the eye here made use of must be the mind's eye (as Shakespear, with his peculiar aptness of expression, calls it) and so strictly just is this metaphor, that nothing is apparently more frequent than a perverse shutting of this mental eye when we have not an inclination to perceive th...
preview | full record— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)
Date: 1754
"I know not likewise, why a short-sighted mind's eye should not be as good an expression as a short-sighted body's eye"
preview | full record— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)
Date: 1754
"But in this we are much kinder to our sense than to our intellect; for in order to assist the former we use glasses and spectacles of all kinds adapted to our deficiency of sight, whereas in the latter we are so far from accepting the assistance of mental glasses or spectacles, that we often str...
preview | full record— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)
Date: 1754
"The poet who writes to the mind's eye, and collects his images through the same medium, lies under a great disadvantage in comparison with the painter"
preview | full record— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)
Date: 1754
"The original, from whence [a painter] draws his copy, is an outward object, and his picture, when finish'd, is address'd to the visual sense: whereas the original, from whence the [poet] takes copy, is perceived by the mind's eye, and address'd also to the mental perception of his reader."
preview | full record— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)
Date: 1754
"If invention then be only a capacity of finding, and not of creating, we must endeavour (if we would exercise this faculty) to to keep our mind's eye open, and on the search, and not close it up by bending all our thoughts on the gratification of some present humour"
preview | full record— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)
Date: 1754
"I should be ashamed of myself, if I would not acknowledge the merit of Ben Johnson as a writer; but a capacity for writing holds so very low a place in my esteem, when weigh'd in the balance with an honest heart, that with me (and I wish it was the same with every other human creature) it...
preview | full record— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)
Date: 1754
"Those inimitably beautiful chorus's to Shakespear's Harry the fifth, where he desires his audience to play with their fancies, and to suffer him to bear them on the lofty wings of his own sublime imagination, over the expanded ocean to different countries and distant climates, we should have tho...
preview | full record— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)
Date: 1754
"Yet such horrid thoughts, my sister, have risen in your Amanda's breast, but thanks to the mercy and grave of my redeemer, they past hastily through my bosom, and from the extreme wretchedness of my earthly situation (for surely no torment can be greater to a tender heart, than the breaking up a...
preview | full record— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)
Date: 1759
"[S]he had no Food from outward Objects, to employ her animal Spirits, and they therefore prey'd at home; and oppressed her own Mind."
preview | full record— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)