"Your constant endeavours have been to inculcate the best principles into youthful minds, the only probable means of mending mankind; for the foundation of most of our virtues, or our vices, are laid in that season of life when we are most susceptible of impression, and when our minds, as on a sheet of white paper, any characters may be engraven."
— Scott [née Robinson], Sarah (1720-1795)
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for J. Newbery
Date
1762
Metaphor
"Your constant endeavours have been to inculcate the best principles into youthful minds, the only probable means of mending mankind; for the foundation of most of our virtues, or our vices, are laid in that season of life when we are most susceptible of impression, and when our minds, as on a sheet of white paper, any characters may be engraven."
Metaphor in Context
In giving you a very circumstantial account of this society, I confess I have a view beyond the pleasure, which a mind like yours must receive from the contemplation of so much virtue. Your constant endeavours have been to inculcate the best principles into youthful minds, the only probable means of mending mankind; for the foundation of most of our virtues, or our vices, are laid in that season of life when we are most susceptible of impression, and when our minds, as on a sheet of white paper, any characters may be engraven; these laudable endeavours, by which we may reasonably expect the rising generation will be greatly improved, render particularly due to you, any examples which may teach those virtues that are not easily learnt by precept, and shew the facility of what, in meer speculation, might appear surrounded with a discouraging impracticability: you are the best judge, whether, by being made public, they may be conducive to your great end of benefitting the world. I therefore submit the following sheets entirely to you."
(pp. 1-2; 53-54)
(pp. 1-2; 53-54)
Categories
Provenance
Found again searching "mind" and "sheet" in HDIS (Prose)
Citation
Five entries in ESTC (1762, 1763, 1764, 1767). Second edition, corrected in 1764; third edition in 1767.
Reading Sarah Scott, A Description of Millenium Hall, ed. Gary Kelly (Ontario: Broadview Literary Texts, 2001).
See also A Description of Millenium Hall, and the Country Adjacent: Together with the Characters of the Inhabitants, And such Historical Anecdotes and Reflections, as May excite in the Reader proper Sentiments of Humanity, and lead the Mind to the Love of Virtue. By A Gentleman on his Travels (London: Printed for J. Newbery, 1762). <Link to archive.org>
Reading Sarah Scott, A Description of Millenium Hall, ed. Gary Kelly (Ontario: Broadview Literary Texts, 2001).
See also A Description of Millenium Hall, and the Country Adjacent: Together with the Characters of the Inhabitants, And such Historical Anecdotes and Reflections, as May excite in the Reader proper Sentiments of Humanity, and lead the Mind to the Love of Virtue. By A Gentleman on his Travels (London: Printed for J. Newbery, 1762). <Link to archive.org>
Theme
Blank Slate
Date of Entry
09/14/2009
Date of Review
04/06/2005
