"This rather disconcerted his scheme, and set him a scratching, that being a kind of involuntary motion with him, whenever a train of ideas kept whirling in his brain with such velocity that he could not fix on any single one to stick by, and let the rest whirl out the way they came in."
— Bridges, Thomas (b. 1710?, d. in or after 1775)
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
T. Davies
Date
1770-1
Metaphor
"This rather disconcerted his scheme, and set him a scratching, that being a kind of involuntary motion with him, whenever a train of ideas kept whirling in his brain with such velocity that he could not fix on any single one to stick by, and let the rest whirl out the way they came in."
Metaphor in Context
[...] but just as he was going to sign his own name to it, Prudence, or Foresight, or some of those gentry, came and told him, that the fees of knighthood, payable to court-leeches, would much exceed his capital, (thought very large for a poet.) This rather disconcerted his scheme, and set him a scratching, that being a kind of involuntary motion with him, whenever a train of ideas kept whirling in his brain with such velocity that he could not fix on any single one to stick by, and let the rest whirl out the way they came in. At last, an old acquaintance of his called Hunger, brought the idea of eating to the outside of the circle: he seized it directly, and in that instant remembered he wanted his breakfast; upon which, flipping on a pair of old shoes called slippers, and taking a brown bason in his hand, he whipped down stairs to get a hot roll and a pint of milk: the mistress of the milk-cellar fill'd his bason in a moment, and held it so that she could take the money with one hand, as she delivered it with the other; when my poor father (whose mind was in high conversation with Phoebus and the Nine) forgetting he had no breeches on, opened his night-gown, and taking up his shirt by way of waist-coat flap, fell to rummaging his naked thigh to find his breeches pocket. The milk-spinner, who was an old maid, (and of consequence not over-stocked with good-nature and patience) quite mistook the matter, and fancied the good man did it on purpose to affront her; she therefore let fly the bason, with all its contents, at the part that offended her eye the most, and stump'd down stairs in high dudgeon.
(I.i, pp. 10-12)
(I.i, pp. 10-12)
Provenance
Reading in ECCO
Citation
Bridges, Thomas, The Adventures of a Bank-Note, 2 vols. (London: Printed for T. Davies, 1770-71) <Link to ECCO>.
Date of Entry
01/21/2013
