Persons who write about themselves and their feelings, as Byron did, may be said to serve up their own hearts, duly spiced, and with brain-sauce out of their own heads, as a repast for the public.
To represent a man in the midst of all sorts of cares and annoyances, with impossibilities to perform, and driven almost distracted by his inadequacy. Then quietly comes Death, and releases him from all his troubles; and he smiles, and congratulates himself on escaping so easily.
What if it should be discovered to be all a mistake, that people, who were supposed to have died long ago, are really dead? Byron to be still living, a man of sixty; Burns, too, in extreme old age; Bonaparte likewise; and many other distinguished men, whose lives might have extended to these limits. Then the private acquaintances, friends, enemies, wives, taken to be dead, to be all really living in this world. The machinery might be a person's being persuaded to believe that he had been mad; or having dwelt many years on a desolate island; or having been in the heart of Africa or China; and a friend amuses himself with giving this account. Or some traveller from Europe shall thus correct popular errors.
The life of a woman, who, by the old Colony law, was condemned to wear always the letter A sewed on her garment in token of her sin.
To make literal pictures of figurative expressions. For instance, he burst into tears,—a man suddenly turned into a shower of briny drops. An explosion of laughter,—a man blowing up, and his fragments flying about on all sides. He cast his eyes upon the ground,—a man standing eyeless, with his eyes thrown down, and staring up at him in wonderment, etc., etc., etc.