"Your impatience to fly to a place which your imagination has painted to you in colours so attractive, surprizes me not; I have only to hope that the liveliness of your fancy may not deceive you: to refuse, would be to raise it still higher."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)


Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for T. Lowndes
Date
1778, 1779
Metaphor
"Your impatience to fly to a place which your imagination has painted to you in colours so attractive, surprizes me not; I have only to hope that the liveliness of your fancy may not deceive you: to refuse, would be to raise it still higher."
Metaphor in Context
TO resist the urgency of entreaty, is a power which I have not yet acquired: I aim not at an authority which deprives you of liberty, yet I would fain guide myself by a prudence which should save me the pangs of repentance. Your impatience to fly to a place which your imagination has painted to you in colours so attractive, surprizes me not; I have only to hope that the liveliness of your fancy may not deceive you: to refuse, would be to raise it still higher. To see my Evelina happy, is to see myself without a wish: go then, my child, and may that Heaven which alone can, direct, preserve, and strengthen you! To That, my love, will I daily offer prayers for your felicity; O may it guard, watch over you! defend you from danger, save you from distress, and keep vice as distant from your person as from your heart! And to Me, may it grant the ultimate blessing of closing these aged eyes in the arms of one so dear--so deservedly beloved!
(I, pp. 21-22)
Provenance
Searching ECCO-TCP
Citation
23 entries in ESTC (1778, 1780, 1783, 1784, 1785, 1788, 1791, 1792, 1793, 1794, 1796, 1797, 1800).

See Evelina, or, a Young Lady's Entrance into the World (London: Printed for T. Lowndes, 1778). <Link to LION>

Text also drawn from Evelina: or, a Young Lady's Entrance into the World. (Dublin: Printed for Messrs. Price, Corcoran, R. Cross, Fitzsimons, W. Whitestone [etc.], 1779). <Link to Vol. I in ECCO-TCP><Vol. II>

Reading Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World, ed. Margaret Doody (New York: Penguin, 1994). Note, Doody uses the third edition, published in 1779, as her copy-text.
Date of Entry
07/23/2014

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