The pleasures of imagination. A poem / In three books.

  • Mark Akenside
Date:
1754
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pleasures of imagination. A poem / In three books. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    33/144 (page 29)
    Of age, commenting on prodigious things. For fuch the bounteous providence of heav’n. In every bread implanting this defire 240 Of objects new and ft range, to urge us on With unremitted labour to purfue Thofe facred ftores that wait the ripening foul. In truth’s exhauftlefs bofom. What need words it to make antends for the injury, by running toward the other extreme of fondnefs and attachment. Or laftly, tho’ the objedt itfelf fhould always continue dif- agreeable, yet circumftances of pleafure or good fortune may Occur along with it. Thus an afTociation may arife in the mind, and the objedt never be remember’d without thofe pleaf- ing circumftances attending it; by which means the difagree-^ able impreflion which it at firft occafion’d will in time be quite obliterated. -this defer e Of objetts new and ftrange-—-] Thefe two ideas are ofc confounded ; tho1 it is evident the meer novelty of an object makes it agreeable, even where the mind is not afFedted with the leaft degree of wonder : whereas wonder indeed always im¬ plies novelty, being never excited by common or well-known appearances. But the pleafure in both cafes is explicable from the fame final caufe, the acquifition of knowledge and inlarge- rnent of our views of nature: on this account it is natural to treat of them together. T©