"I learnt, that when these people were first rescued out of their misery, their healths were much impaired, and their tempers more so: to restore the first, all medicinal care was taken, and air and exercise assisted greatly in their recovery; but to cure the malady of the mind, and conquer that internal source of unhappiness, was a work of longer time."

— Scott [née Robinson], Sarah (1720-1795)


Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for J. Newbery
Date
1762
Metaphor
"I learnt, that when these people were first rescued out of their misery, their healths were much impaired, and their tempers more so: to restore the first, all medicinal care was taken, and air and exercise assisted greatly in their recovery; but to cure the malady of the mind, and conquer that internal source of unhappiness, was a work of longer time."
Metaphor in Context
This scene had made too deep an impression on our minds, not to be the subject of our discourse all the way home, and in the course of conversation, I learnt, that when these people were first rescued out of their misery, their healths were much impaired, and their tempers more so: to restore the first, all medicinal care was taken, and air and exercise assisted greatly in their recovery; but to cure the malady of the mind, and conquer that internal source of unhappiness, was a work of longer time. Even these poor wretches had their vanity, and would contend for superior merit, of which, the argument was the money their keepers had gained in exhibiting them. To put an end to this contention, the ladies made them understand, that what they thought a subject for boasting, was only a proof of their being so much farther from the usual standard of the human form, and therefore a more extraordinary spectacle. But it was long before one of them could be persuaded to lay aside her pretensions to superiority, which she claimed on account of an extraordinary honour she had received from a great princess, who had made her a present of a sedan chair.
(74).
Provenance
Reading; found again in HDIS
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>
Date of Entry
01/25/2004

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