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"So forcibly indeed was Sindall struck with it, that some little time past before he thought of lifting her from the ground; he looked indeed his very soul at every glance; but it was a soul unworthy of the object on which he gazed, brutal, unfeeling and inhuman; he considered her, at that moment, as already within the reach of his machinations, and feasted the grossness of his fancy with the anticipation of her undoing."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Author

The Man of the World

Place of Publication

London

Publisher

Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell

Date

1773

Metaphor

"So forcibly indeed was Sindall struck with it, that some little time past before he thought of lifting her from the ground; he looked indeed his very soul at every glance; but it was a soul unworthy of the object on which he gazed, brutal, unfeeling and inhuman; he considered her, at that moment, as already within the reach of his machinations, and feasted the grossness of his fancy with the anticipation of her undoing."

Metaphor in Context

At sight of him, her cheek was flushed with the mingled glow of shame for her brother, and gratitude towards his benefactor. He advanced to salute her; when, with the tears starting into her eyes, she fell on her knees before him, and poured forth a prayer of blessings on his head. There could not perhaps be a figure more lovely, or more striking, than that which she then exhibited. The lustre of her eyes, heightened by those tears with which the overflowing of her heart supplied them; the glow of her complexion, animated with the suffusion of tenderness and gratitude; these, joined to the easy negligence of her dark-brown locks, that waved in ringlets on her panting bosom, made altogether such an assemblage as beauty is a word too weak for. So forcibly indeed was Sindall struck with it, that some little time past before he thought of lifting her from the ground; he looked indeed his very soul at every glance; but it was a soul unworthy of the object on which he gazed, brutal, unfeeling and inhuman; he considered her, at that moment, as already within the reach of his machinations, and feasted the grossness of his fancy with the anticipation of her undoing.
(pp. 188-189)