theme,metaphor,work_id,dictionary,provenance,id,created_at,updated_at,reviewed_on,comments,text,context
"","""[T]he thing in which my imagination revelled the most freely, was the analysis of the private and internal operations of the mind, employing my metaphysical dissecting knife in tracing and laying bare the involutions of motive, and recording the gradually accumulating impulses.""",5826,"",Reading,15547,2009-09-14 19:43:56 UTC,2009-09-14 19:43:56 UTC,2007-10-12,"","I began my narrative, as is the more usual way, in the third person. but I speedily became dissatisfied. I then assumed the first person, making the hero of my tale his own historian; and in this mode I have persisted in all my subsequent attempts at works of fiction. It was infinitely the best adapted, at least, to my vein of delineation, where the thing in which my imagination revelled the most freely, was the analysis of the private and internal operations of the mind, employing my metaphysical dissecting knife in tracing and laying bare the involutions of motive, and recording the gradually accumulating impulses, which led the personages I had to describe primarily to adopt the particular way of proceeding in which they afterwards embarked.
(p. 448)",From Appendix A in Broadview edition
"","""My heart was lightened of its wonted burthen, and I laboured to invent some harmless explication of the scene I had witnessed the preceding night.""",5925,"",Reading,15722,2003-07-16 00:00:00 UTC,2009-09-14 19:44:28 UTC,2007-06-26,"","By this new train of ideas I was somewhat comforted. I saw the folly of precipitate inferences, and the injustice of my atrocious imputations, and acquired some degree of patience in my present state of uncertainty. My heart was lightened of its wonted burthen, and I laboured to invent some harmless explication of the scene I had witnessed the preceding night.
(Part I, chapter 8, p. 298)",Mervyn had thought that Welbeck's ward was pregnant
"","The heart may be ""lightened of its usual weight""",5925,"",Reading,15726,2003-07-18 00:00:00 UTC,2009-09-14 19:44:29 UTC,,"","My purpose being formed, I found my heart lightened of its usual weight. By you it will be thought strange, but it is nevertheless true, that I derived from this new prospect, not only tranquility but cheerfulness. I hastened home. As soon as I entered, my land-lord informed me that a person had been searching for me in my absence. This was an unexampled incident and foreboded me no good
(Part I, chapter 10, p. 311)",Welbeck's narrative
"","""The sympathy, however, had proved contagious, and the stranger turned away his face to hide his own tears.""",5925,"",Reading,15743,2003-07-18 00:00:00 UTC,2009-09-14 19:44:32 UTC,2007-06-19,•Contagious sympathy in the midst of the yellow fever!,"This intelligence was fatal to my hopes. It required some efforts to subdue my rising emotions. Compassion not only for Wallace, but for Thetford, his father, his wife, and his child, caused a passionate effusion of tears. I was ashamed of this useless and child-like sensibility; and attempted to apologize to my companion. The sympathy, however, had proved contagious, and the stranger turned away his face to hide his own tears.
(Part I, chapter 16, p. 366)",Mervyn talks with Mr. Estwick (Thetford's neighbor)
"","""These images now gave birth to a third conception, which darted on my benighted understanding like an electrical flash.""",5925,"",Reading,15750,2003-07-21 00:00:00 UTC,2011-04-15 16:22:16 UTC,2007-06-26,"Welbeck and Mervyn discuss the Lodi bills
•Mixed metaphor. Birth and electrical flash?
•Note that incidents, like thoughts, may be revolved. This is another sort of revolution. This is a typically rich passage from Mervyn.
• Wollstonecraft uses same image... CONNECT. ","As I perpetually revolved these incidents, they assumed new forms, and were linked with new associations. The volume written by his father, and transferred to me by tokens, which were now remembered to be more emphatic than the nature of the composition seemed to justify, was likewise remembered. It came attended by recollections respecting a volume which I filled, when a youth, with extracts from the Roman and Greek poets. Besides this literary purpose I likewise used to preserve the bank bills, with the keeping or carriage of which I chanced to be intrusted. This image led me back to the leather-case containing Lodis's property, which was put into my hands at the same time with the volume.
These images now gave birth to a third conception, which darted on my benighted understanding like an electrical flash. Was it possible that Lodi's property might be inclosed with the leaves of this volume? In hastily turning it over, I recollected to have noticed leaves whose edges by accident or design adhered to each other. Lodi, in speaking of the sale of his father's West-Indian property, mentioned the sum obtained for it, was forty thousand dollars. Half only of this sum had been discovered by me. How had the remainder been appropriated? Surely this volume contained it.
The influence of this thought was like the infusion of a new soul into my frame.
(Part I, chapter 21, p. 409)",""
"",The face may be an index of an honest mind,5960,"",Reading,15819,2003-07-21 00:00:00 UTC,2009-09-14 19:44:46 UTC,,•Face and mind,"Wickedness may sometimes be ambiguous, its mask may puzzle the observer; our judgment may be made to faulter and fluctuate, but the face of Mervyn is the index of an honest mind.
(Part II, chapter 2, p. 436)",""
"",The passions may be supplied with food,5960,"",Reading,15831,2003-07-21 00:00:00 UTC,2009-09-14 19:44:49 UTC,,"•Some mixing of metaphors in that passion is described in the next paragraph as a flame. (I have not created an entry for the ""flame."") REVISIT.
•Hadwin reminds me of Godwin's Barnabas Tyrrel","I was indebted for my safety to an inflexible adherence to this medium. To have strayed, for a moment, to either side, would have brought upon me his blows. that he did not instantly resort to violence, inspired me with courage, since it depended on myself whether food should be supplied to his passion. Rage must either progress or decline, and since it was in total want of provocation, it could not fail of gradually subsiding.
My demeanor was calculated to damp the flame, not only by its direct influence, but by diverting his attention from the wrongs which he had received, to the novelty of my behaviour.
(Part II, chapter 10, p. 505)",Mervyn confronts Philip Hadwin (Eliza's uncle)
"",One may be buried in thought,5960,"",Reading,15849,2003-07-21 00:00:00 UTC,2009-09-14 19:44:52 UTC,,"•Welbeck is twice described as being ""buried in reverie"" (532, 534).","Meanwhile I placed myself before her, and fixed my eyes steadfastly upon her features. There is no book in which I read with more pleasure, than the face of a woman. That is generally more full of meaning, and of better meaning too, than the hard and inflexible lineaments of man, and this woman's face has no parallel.
She read it with visible emotion. Having gone through it, she did not lift her eye from the paper, but continued silent, as if buried in thought. After some time, for I would not interrupt the pause, she addressed me thus:
This girl seems to be very anxious to be with you.
(Part II, chapter 22, p. 595)",Achsa Fielding reads Eliza's letter to Mervyn
"",The heart may be sore,5960,"",Reading,15857,2003-07-21 00:00:00 UTC,2009-09-14 19:44:54 UTC,,"","Why, I asked, did she weep.
My heart is sore.
(Part II, chapter 25, p. 636)",Final pages. Mervyn's interview with Achsa.
"","""My curiosity grew more eager, in proportion as it was supplied with food, and every day added strength to the assurance that I was no insignificant and worthless being.""",5960,"",Reading,18725,2011-06-17 17:10:14 UTC,2011-06-17 17:10:14 UTC,,"","I now set about carrying my plan of life into effect. I began with ardent zeal and unwearied diligence the career of medical study. I bespoke the counsels and instructions of my friend; attended him on his professional visits, and acted, in all practicable cases, as his substitute. I found this application of time more pleasurable than I had imagined. My mind gradually expanded itself, as it were, for the reception of new ideas. My curiosity grew more eager, in proportion as it was supplied with food, and every day added strength to the assurance that I was no insignificant and worthless being; that I was destined to be something in this scene of existence, and might someday lay claim to the gratitude and homage of my fellow-men.
(II,xxi, p. 589)","Part II, Chapter xxi"