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"When he was told of Mrs. Wistanly's arrival, he desired to see her, and taking her hand, "I have sent for you, madam, said he, that you may help me to unload my soul of the remembrance of the past."

— 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

"When he was told of Mrs. Wistanly's arrival, he desired to see her, and taking her hand, "I have sent for you, madam, said he, that you may help me to unload my soul of the remembrance of the past."

Metaphor in Context

Sir Thomas seemed to feel a sort of melancholy satisfaction in having this company of those he had injured assembled under his roof. When he was told of Mrs. Wistanly's arrival, he desired to see her, and taking her hand, "I have sent for you, madam, said he, that you may help me to unload my soul of the remembrance of the past." He then confessed to her that plan of seduction by which he had overcome the virtue of Annesly, and the honor of his sister. "You were a witness, he concluded; of the fall of that worth and innocence which it was in the power of my former crimes to destroy; you are now come to behold the retribution of heaven on the guilty. By that hand, whom it commissioned to avenge a parent and a sister, I am cut off in the midst of my days." "I hope not, sir, answered she; your life, I trust, will make a better expiation. In the punishments of the divinity there is no idea of vengeance; and the infliction of what we term evil, serves equally the purpose of universal benignity, with the dispensation of good." "I feel, replied sir Thomas, the force of that observation: the pain of this wound; the presentiment of death which it instils; the horror with which the recollection of my incestuous passion strikes me; all these are in the catalogue of my blessings. They indeed take from me the world; but they give me myself."
(pp. 241-243)