soul-dissection

Updated: May 24, 2025

The poet's appetite for "soul-dissection" was amply shown in the characters not merely of Paracelsus himself, but of his soberer friends Festus and Michal, and of the Italian poet Aprile, a sort of Euphorion pretty evidently suggested by, though greatly enlarged from, the actual Euphorion of the second part of Faust, then not long finished.

George Saintsbury - A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895)

Nor does it seem much more reasonable for anybody to contend that his fashion of soul-dissection at a hand-gallop, in drama, in monologue, in lay sermon, was not largely, even grossly, abused. Even in the best of these what is good could generally, if not always, have been put at the length of the shorter Men and Women with no loss, nay, with great advantage.

George Saintsbury - A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895)