"I advised our Miss H--- to the same remedy, but have a notion her mind is haunted by one particular image; if so, nothing will cure her; for if the heart be broken 'tis broken like a looking-glass, and the smallest piece will for ever preserve and reflect the same figure till 'tis again ground down into a new mass."
— Piozzi, [née Salusbury; other married name Thrale] Hester Lynch (1741-1821)
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for A. Strahan; and T. Cadell
Date
w. August 30, 1783, printed 1788
Metaphor
"I advised our Miss H--- to the same remedy, but have a notion her mind is haunted by one particular image; if so, nothing will cure her; for if the heart be broken 'tis broken like a looking-glass, and the smallest piece will for ever preserve and reflect the same figure till 'tis again ground down into a new mass."
Metaphor in Context
The sea here at Weymouth is not half as fine as our old sea on the Sussex coast, and a marine prospect is at best a dull one after the first week: the seasons have no effect on it; and when one has once seen it rough and once seen it smooth, all is over; while every hour of every day produces some change upon a land view, and excites new images in any mind not totally crushed down or exhausted. The look from my window is mighty pretty however, and exhibits so tranquil a scene as it is difficult for old Ocean to display. I can imagine it like the Lake of Geneva, so blue, so still, so elegantly serpentized as if Mr. Brown had laid it out. In short this is no Phœnician Neptune whose beard is said to be longer than the others, because that place produced the earliest navigators: this shall be an Otaheite Neptune, and we will strike a medal of him all shaven and shorn, to shew that no canoe even of the Society Islands need fear him, though ignorant of the act of sailing till the world was got into its dotage as Goldsmith said, when he made the sharper talk about cosmogony. This nonsense came into my head as I saw a sailor on horseback this morning, and began thinking what could inspire the ancients to make Neptune the Creator of a horse, for if any thing was ever foreign from the purpose, that was foreign, or the man that rode under my window to-day had grievously degenerated.--So as you say, my dear Sir, change of place does one some good, by giving one some new thing to think on though but for a moment. I advised our Miss H--- to the same remedy, but have a notion her mind is haunted by one particular image; if so, nothing will cure her; for if the heart be broken 'tis broken like a looking-glass, and the smallest piece will for ever preserve and reflect the same figure till 'tis again ground down into a new mass.
(pp. 306-307)
(pp. 306-307)
Provenance
Searching in Google Books
Citation
See Letters to and from the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. To which are Added Some Poems Never Before Printed. Published from the Original MSS. in her Possession, by Hester Lynch Piozzi. 2 vols. (London: Printed for A. Strahan; and T. Cadell, 1788).
<Link to Google Books>
Date of Entry
10/12/2013
