The title page to Swift's 1735 Works, depicting the author in the Dean's chair, receiving the thanks of Ireland. The Horatian motto reads, Exegi Monumentum Ære perennius, "I have completed a monument more lasting than brass." The 'brass' is a pun, for Wood's half-pence (alloyed with brass) is scattered at his feet. Cherubim award Swift a poet's laurel. [From Wiki]
Our Imagination loves to be filled with an Object, or to graspe at anything that is too big for its Capacity. --Josph Addison, Spectator, no. 412 ...every person upon seeing a grand object is affected with something which as it were extends his very being, and expands it to a kind of immensity. Thus in viewing the heavens, how the soul is elevated; and streatching itself to larger scenes and more extended prospects, in a noble enthusiasm of grandeur quits the narrow earth...Hence comes the name of sublime to everything which thus raises the mind to fits of greatness...that object can only be justly called the sublime, which...disposes the mind to this enlargement of itself, and gives her a lofty conception of her own powers. ---John Baillie 1747 ...In its stead emerges an attention to the religious sublime and, through its mediation, the ushering forth of the natural sublime. The attention to the natural sublime in the eighteenth century signals the locus of the dinvine in a minor key, appropriate to an age (the Age of Reason, the Age of Enlightenment, etc.) grown increasingly secular, rationalistic, and generally more circumspect about theological matters. ---Shaun Irlam, "The Sublime" Also See Edward Young' s Conjectures on Original Composition A satirical print against Pope from Pope Alexander (1729). The print was also sold separately. It shows Pope as a monkey, because the satirist calls him "A--- P—E," and he sits atop a stack of Pope's works and wears a papal tiara (referring to Pope's Roman Catholicism). The Latin at the top means "Know thyself," and the verse at the bottom is Pope's own satire on Thersites from Essay on Criticism. This was only one of many attacks on Pope after the Dunciad Variorum. |
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