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

The History of Sir George Ellison. In Two Volumes. [etc.]

London

Printed for A. Millar, [etc.]

1766

A father may think it his duty to conquer faults in his child "which, when strengthened by time and habit, must prove incorrigible"

But this was not within the reach of her power. Mr. Ellison's vexations encreased with the age of his little boy: he was equally the darling of both his parents, but they differed much in their opinions as to the proofs of that affection. The child was naturally of a passionate and stubborn temper; which his father saw with concern, and thought it his duty to keep him within reasonable controul; and if possible to conquer faults, which, when strengthened by time and habit, must prove incorrigible. Mrs. Ellison, on the contrary, called his passion spirit, and his stubbornness constancy and steadiness, and could not bear he should receive the least contradiction. She was continually puffing him up with the notion of his consequence; representing all the people about him as his slaves; and making them seek to please him by the most abject means. She taught him to look on them in the same light as she herself did, as creatures destitute of all natural rights, of sense, and feeling. She was pleased to see him vent his childish passions upon them, and was always ready to gratify his resentments beyond his wish; and so successful were her endeavours, that by the time he arrived at the age of five years, he was a little fury, bursting with pride, passion, insolence, and obstinacy. Not that Mr. Ellison had tamely submitted to her corrupting the mind of a child he doated on: From a gratitude he thought due to her, from an excess of good-nature, that rendered it irksome to him to be the author even of a momentary pain, and from a love of peace, which made him think contention a greater evil than obedience, he had suffered her to gain an influence over him, which, though his reason disapproved, yet his conscience acquiesced in, as it was no moral evil; but when his child's present and future happiness were in question, the case was altered; he considered it as a being intrusted to his care, for whose temporal and eternal welfare he was answerable, as far as education and paternal authority could affect it. He endeavoured to teach her the duty of a parent, and to convince her that her indulgence rendered her the child's most pernicious enemy; but having never reasoned in her life, the faculty was too feeble to enter into the force of his arguments; she was too perverse to attend, and too weak to be convinced.
(pp. 75-7)

War::Conquest

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

01/25/2005