"The window was open. Away the troublesome bosom-visiter [Conscience], the intruder, is flown."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)


Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for S. Richardson
Date
1747-8
Metaphor
"The window was open. Away the troublesome bosom-visiter [Conscience], the intruder, is flown."
Metaphor in Context
But what a heap of stuff have I written! --How have I been run away with! --By what? --Canst thou say, by what? --O thou lurking varletess Conscience! --Is it Thou, that hast thus made me of party against myself? --How camest thou in? --In what disguise, thou egregious haunter of my more agreeable hours? --Stand thou, with fate, but neuter in this controversy; and, if I cannot do credit to human nature, and to the female sex, by bringing down such an angel as this to class with and adorn it (for adorn it she does in her very foibles), then I am all yours, and never will resist you more.

Here I arose. I shook myself. The window was open. Away the troublesome bosom-visiter, the intruder, is flown. --I see it yet! --I see it yet! --And now it lessens to my aching eye! --And now the cleft air has closed after it, and it is out of sight! --And once more I am

Robert Lovelace.
(p. 172)
Categories
Provenance
Searching in HDIS (Prose)
Citation
Published December 1747 (vols. 1-2), April 1748 (vols. 3-4), December 1748 (vols. 5-7). Over 28 entries in ESTC (1748, 1749, 1751, 1751, 1759, 1764, 1765, 1768, 1772, 1774, 1780, 1784, 1785, 1788, 1790, 1791, 1792, 1794, 1795, 1798, 1800). Passages "restored" in 3rd edition of 1751. An abridgment in 1756.

See Samuel Richardson, Clarissa. Or, the History of a Young Lady: Comprehending the Most Important Concerns of Private Life, 7 vols. (London: Printed for S. Richardson, 1748). <Link to ECCO>

Some text drawn from ECCO-TCP <Link to vol. I in ECCO-TCP><Link to vol. II><Link to vol. III><Link to vol. IV><Link to vol. V><Link to vol. VI><Link to vol. VII>

Reading Samuel Richardson, Clarissa; or, the History of a Young Lady, ed. Angus Ross (London: Penguin Books, 1985). <Link to LION>
Date of Entry
01/25/2006
Date of Review
07/31/2009

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.