The Diverting History of John Gilpin
July 13, 2021
No Comments
So I ran across this poem in the current collection I’m reading. It’s by William Cowper in 1782 and it’s titled The Diverting History of
Category: Classic Literature
More Chaucer follow up
July 2, 2021
No Comments
Reading Chaucer’s Canterbury tales, I realized I could understand quite a bit. It helps that I’ve been in more contact with older forms of English
Chaucer’s past participles
July 1, 2021
No Comments
So I am running across this construction in verbs while reading the prologue to the Canterbury Tales. It is to start certain verb forms with a
Dual Natures and the Release of Curiosity
June 30, 2021
No Comments
Reading through volume 39 of the Harvard Series- Famous Prefaces, I’m in Victor Hugo’s preface to Cromwell, where he defines the Romanticist movement. He starts
Similitude in Dissimilitude
June 29, 2021
No Comments
William Wordsworth in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, writes “a principle which must be well known to those who have made any of the Arts
Samuel Johnson on his Dictionary
June 25, 2021
No Comments
In the book of prefaces I’m reading right now, this one by Samuel Johnson, in the preface to his dictionary, made me think of my
Hume’s Enquiry into Human Understanding
June 2, 2021
No Comments
Experience and Inference Hume sees two classes of perception: thoughts and impressions. Impressions are the stronger perceptions we get firsthand as we experience the world. Thoughts
Are All Ideas Derived from Nature?
May 31, 2021
No Comments
Reading David Hume’s Enquiry into Human Understanding. His first chapter of the Enquiry is of the Origin of Ideas. He separates thoughts into two categories-
Deep? or Just Incomprehensible?
May 30, 2021
No Comments
I have been reading a lot of philosophy in the Harvard Classics series. I used to assume that if I didn’t understand some densely written
How the Trick was Done
May 29, 2021
No Comments
Berkeley’s Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonus George Berkeley was a proponent of what came to be known as subjective idealism, a theory that denied