Date: 1704

"The following Treatise is but a small part of a Volume of Criticism intended to be publish'd in Folio, in which in Treating of the works of the most Celebrated English Poets Deceas'd, I design'd to shew both by Reason and Examples, that the use of Religion in Poetry was absolutely necessary to r...

— Dennis, John (1658-1734)

Date: 1704

"It is plain then that these Persons by designing totally to suppress the Stage, which is the only encouragement that we have in these Islands of Poetry, manifestly intended to drive out so noble and useful an Art from among us, and by that means endeavour'd with all their might to weaken the pow...

— Dennis, John (1658-1734)

Date: 1704

"Nay, wise Men and great Philosophers, have accounted it as the Archet or Musical Bow of the Mind. And certainly it is most true, and as it were a Secret of Nature, that the Minds of Men are more patent to Affections, and Impressions Congregate than Solitary."

— Dennis, John (1658-1734)

Date: 1704

"For he tells us in the beginning of the Treatise that the Sublime does not so properly persuade us, as it Ravishes and Transports us, and produces in us a certain Admiration mingled with astonishment and with surprise, which is quite another thing than the barely Pleasing or the barely perswadin...

— Dennis, John (1658-1734)

Date: 1704

"For the Spirits being set in a violent emotion, and the Imagination being fir'd by that agitation; and the Brain being deeply penetrated by those Impressions, the very Objects themselves are set as it were before us, and consequently we are sensible of the same Passion that we should feel from t...

— Dennis, John (1658-1734)

Date: 1704

"For the warmer the Imagination is, the less able we are to Reflect, and consequently the things are the more present to us of which we draw the Images; and therefore when the Imagination is so inflam'd as to render the Soul utterly incapable of reflecting there is no difference between the Image...

— Dennis, John (1658-1734)

Date: 1704

"But as soon as Religion was sufficiently imprinted in the Minds of Men, and they had leisure to Treat of Human things in their writings they invented Prose, and invented it in Imitation of Verse, as Strabo tells us in the first Book of his Geography; but after that Prose was invented by them; ne...

— Dennis, John (1658-1734)

Date: May 10, 1704

"He that can with Epicurus content his ideas with the films and images that fly off upon his senses from the superficies of things, such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature, leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"Thrice have I forced my imagination to take the tour of my invention, and thrice it has returned empty, the latter having been wholly drained by the following treatise."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"The deepest account, and the most fairly digested of any I have yet met with is this, that air being a heavy body, and therefore, according to the system of Epicurus, continually descending, must needs be more so when laden and pressed down by words, which are also bodies of much weight and grav...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)