His existence is now at last in no danger of comminution, but then his powers are absolutely gone and quite evaporated. In a word, he is as dry and empty as a beer barrel after it has been some time set a-broach to a drunken mob at a general election."

— Campbell, Archibald (bap. 1724, d. 1780)


Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed, and sold by the booksellers in London and Westminster
Date
1767
Metaphor
His existence is now at last in no danger of comminution, but then his powers are absolutely gone and quite evaporated. In a word, he is as dry and empty as a beer barrel after it has been some time set a-broach to a drunken mob at a general election."
Metaphor in Context
[...] they exhibited a most violent and dratic purgative to him, which brought on him this morning to the manifest periclitation of his life, a most terrible hypercatharsis, which Apollo himself, the God of physicians, with all his medical powers, has hardly been able to stop. His existence is now at last in no danger of comminution, but then his powers are absolutely gone and quite evaporated. In a word, he is as dry and empty as a beer barrel after it has been [end page 58] some time set a-broach to a drunken mob at a general election.
(pp. 58-9)
Provenance
Searching in ECCO
Citation
Archibald Campbell, The Sale of Authors, a Dialogue, in Imitation of Lucian's Sale of Philosophers (London, 1767). <Link to ECCO><Link to Hathi Trust>
Date of Entry
10/13/2006

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