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

A Description of Millenium Hall, and the Country Adjacent

London

Printed for J. Newbery

1762

"Her sensibility was never so strongly awakened; all her endeavours to restrain it were no longer of force, her heart returned his passion, and would have conquered every thing but her justice and her honour."

These difficulties detained her, though unwillingly, at Lady Lambton's for above half a year after Sir Edward's return; who, at length, unable to confine in silence a passion which had long been obvious to every observer, took an opportunity, when alone with Louisa, to declare his attachment in the most affecting manner. She received it not with surprise, but with real sorrow. She had no tincture of coquettry in her composition; but if she had been capable of it, her affections were too deeply engaged to have suffered her to retain it. Her sensibility was never so strongly awakened; all her endeavours to restrain it were no longer of force, her heart returned his passion, and would have conquered every thing but her justice and her honour; these were deeply engaged to Lady Lambton; and she would have detested herself, if she could have entertained a thought of making that lady's goodness to her, the occasion of the greatest vexation she could receive. She therefore never hesitated on the part she should act on this trying occasion; but the victories which honour gains over the tender affections, are not to be obtained without the severest pangs. Thus tormented by the struggles between duty and affection, she was not immediately capable of giving him an answer; but finding that her difficulties were increasing, by his repeated professions, and animated by the necessity of silencing a love, which too successfully sollicited a return of affection, she assumed a sufficient command over herself to conceal her sentiments, and with averted eyes, lest her heart should through them contradict her words, she told him, 'he distressed her to the greatest degree; that the respect she had for him on account of his own merit, and not less for the relation he bore to Lady Lambton, made her extremely concerned that he should have conceived a passion for her, which it was not in her power to return; nor could she listen to it in justice to Lady Lambton, to do any thing prejudicial to the interests of a family into which she had been so kindly received.'
(pp. 113-4)

War::Conquest::Conqueror

Searching "conque" and "passion" in HDIS (Prose)

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>

02/08/2005