"Each mole-hill thought swells to a huge Olympus; / While we, fantastic dreamers, heave and puff, / And sweat with our imagination's weight."
— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for S. Richardson
Date
1747-8
Metaphor
"Each mole-hill thought swells to a huge Olympus; / While we, fantastic dreamers, heave and puff, / And sweat with our imagination's weight."
Metaphor in Context
Mowbray, after this, amusing himself in our friend's library, which is, as thou knowest, chiefly classical and dramatical, found out a passage in Lee's Oedipus, which he could needs have to be extremely apt, and in he came full fraught with the notion of the courage it would give the dying man, and read it to him. 'Tis poetical and pretty. This is it.
When the sun sets, shadows that shew'd at noon.
But small, appear most long and terrible:
So when we think fate hovers o'er our heads,
Our apprehensions shoot beyond all bounds:
Owls, ravens, crickets seem the watch of death:
Nature's worst vermin scare her god-like sons.
Echoes, the very leavings of a voice,
Grow babling ghosts, and call us to our graves.
[Page 10] Each mole-hill thought swells to a huge Olympus;
While we, fantastic dreamers, heave and puff,
And sweat with our imagination's weight.
He expected praises for finding this out. But Belton turning his head from him, Ah, Dick! (said he) these are not the reflections of a dying man! What thou wilt one day feel, if it be what I now feel, will convince thee that the evils before thee, and with thee, are more than the effects of imagination.
When the sun sets, shadows that shew'd at noon.
But small, appear most long and terrible:
So when we think fate hovers o'er our heads,
Our apprehensions shoot beyond all bounds:
Owls, ravens, crickets seem the watch of death:
Nature's worst vermin scare her god-like sons.
Echoes, the very leavings of a voice,
Grow babling ghosts, and call us to our graves.
[Page 10] Each mole-hill thought swells to a huge Olympus;
While we, fantastic dreamers, heave and puff,
And sweat with our imagination's weight.
He expected praises for finding this out. But Belton turning his head from him, Ah, Dick! (said he) these are not the reflections of a dying man! What thou wilt one day feel, if it be what I now feel, will convince thee that the evils before thee, and with thee, are more than the effects of imagination.
Categories
Provenance
Searching "mole" 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>
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
05/22/2006
