"At his entrance, his little deal desk mounted on his only table, stood invitingly before him: there was inspiration in the sight; he snatched wildly a cracked ink-horn from a shelf which contained nothing else, but a few mouldy crusts, and a few mouldy books; flourished his pen, looked up a moment with a fixed and raptured eye, then pulled eagerly one of my sheets from its concealment, cried vehemently 'I have it,' and instantly laying me prostrate before him, began to trace in black characters on my body, the ideas that laboured in his mind."

— Anonymous


Author
Place of Publication
London
Date
August, September, and October, 1779
Metaphor
"At his entrance, his little deal desk mounted on his only table, stood invitingly before him: there was inspiration in the sight; he snatched wildly a cracked ink-horn from a shelf which contained nothing else, but a few mouldy crusts, and a few mouldy books; flourished his pen, looked up a moment with a fixed and raptured eye, then pulled eagerly one of my sheets from its concealment, cried vehemently 'I have it,' and instantly laying me prostrate before him, began to trace in black characters on my body, the ideas that laboured in his mind."
Metaphor in Context
[...] But to proceed with my history; I had not been two days in the stationer's shop, ere eight of my sheets were purchased by a pale and meagre, yet interesting figure of a man, with three half-pence and the pawn of a silver sleeve button, who tucked me between his coat and his shirt (for his full suit of clothes days were over) and glided away from me to a wretched apartment four stories high, with seeming transport. At his entrance, his little deal desk mounted on his only table, stood invitingly before him: there was inspiration in the sight; he snatched wildly a cracked ink-horn from a shelf which contained nothing else, but a few mouldy crusts, and a few mouldy books; flourished his pen, looked up a moment with a fixed and raptured eye, then pulled eagerly one of my sheets from its concealment, cried vehemently 'I have it,' and instantly laying me prostrate before him, began to trace in black characters on my body, the ideas that laboured in his mind. In short, from this exalted station, I took my first flight as an essay on wealth, which my hungry maker sold for the prodigious sum fo then shillings to the editor of a fashionable magazine, and really seemed to think he had realized his own warm description, while so many splendid pieces were paying into his pennyless palm.
(p. 36)
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Published in three parts in the London Magazine or Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer, 48 (August 1779), pp. 355-8, (September 1779), pp. 395-8, and (October 1779), pp. 448-52. Reprinted in Edinburgh Weekly Magazine (1779) and Dublin's Gentleman's and London Magazine (1779).

Text from British It-Narratives, 1750-1830, vol. 4, ed. Mark Blackwell (Pickering and Chatto, 2012).
Date of Entry
10/01/2013

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