IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH
GEORGE ELIOT
Second Edition
William Blackwood and Sons Edinburgh and London MDCCCLXXIX
"Suspicione si quis errabit sua, Et rapiet ad se, quod erit commune omnium, Stulte nudabit animi conscientiam Huic excusatum me velim nihilominus Neque enim notare singulos mens est mihi, Verum ipsam vitam et mores hominum ostendere"
--Phaedrus
CONTENTS
I. LOOKING INWARD
II. LOOKING BACKWARD
III. HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH
IV. A MAN SURPRISED AT HIS ORIGINALITY
V. A TOO DEFERENTIAL MAN
VI. ONLY TEMPER
VII. A POLITICAL MOLECULE
VIII. THE WATCH-DOG OF KNOWLEDGE
IX. A HALF-BREED
X. DEBASING THE MORAL CURRENCY
XI. THE WASP CREDITED WITH THE HONEYCOMB
XII. "SO YOUNG!"
XIII. HOW WE COME TO GIVE OURSELVES FALSE TESTIMONIALS, AND BELIEVE IN THEM
XIV. THE TOO READY WRITER
XV. DISEASES OF SMALL AUTHORSHIP
XVI. MORAL SWINDLERS
XVII. SHADOWS OF THE COMING RACE
XVIII. THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP!
I.
LOOKING INWARD.
It is my habit to give an account to myself of the characters I meet with: can I give any true account of my own? I am a bachelor, without domestic distractions of any sort, and have all my life been an attentive companion to myself, flattering my nature agreeably on plausible occasions, reviling it rather bitterly when it mortified me, and in general remembering its doings and sufferings with a tenacity which is too apt to raise surprise if not disgust at the careless inaccuracy of my acquaintances, who impute to me opinions I never held, express their desire to convert me to my favourite ideas, forget whether I have ever been to the East, and are capable of being three several times astonished at my never having told them before of my accident in the Alps, causing me the nervous shock which has ever since notably diminished my digestive powers. Surely I ought to know myself better than these indifferent outsiders can know me; nay, better even than my intimate friends, to whom I have never breathed those items of my inward experience which have chiefly shaped my life.
Yet I have often been forced into the reflection that even the acquaintances who are as forgetful of my biography and tenets as they would be if I were a dead philosopher, are probably
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: Impressions of Theophrastus Such by George Eliot
- 2: Which in turn are secrets unguessed by me
- 3: Though not averse to finding fault with myself
- 4: And from awkward feet infer awkward fallacies
- 5: If a squint or other ocular defect disturbs my vision
- 6: Explain their purposes at length
- 7: Inspiring illusion of being listened to
- 8: Or heard the loudest grumbling at the heaviest war taxes
- 9: And by consequence scorn my own scorn
- 10: Many ugly modern things have arisen
- 11: And how could he save without getting his tithe
- 12: Along by the tree studded hedgerows
- 13: In contrast with the word rebel
- 14: And paid heavier and heavier taxes
- 15: One such victim is my old acquaintance Merman
- 16: Whose book is cried up as a revelation
- 17: And Merman was the reverse of ill natured
- 18: Cachalot had not read either Grampus or Merman
- 19: Motzis was probably a false reading for potzis
- 20: Mr Merman and the Magicodumbras
- 21: Flexible Merman was on the way to be shunned as a bore
- 22: Merman had never been a rich man
- 23: For what might not Lentulus have done
- 24: The compositions might be fairly classed as Ossianic
- 25: Lentulus at least had not the bias of a school
- 26: But Lentulus was at once so unreceptive
- 27: He is the superlatively deferential man
- 28: Felicia was evidently embarrassed by his reverent wonder
- 29: Tulpian is appealed to on innumerable subjects
- 30: Before Hinze can find a relish for it
- 31: Or is grossly rude to his wife
- 32: They are not a spontaneous prompting of goodwill
- 33: The adhesion is sudden and momentary
- 34: Now spinning and weaving from a manufacturing
- 35: Or that a lady should always wear the best jewellery
- 36: Spike was obliged to contemplate a general benefit
- 37: You are fond of attributing those fine qualities to Mordax
- 38: Form no lively conception of what Laniger suffers
- 39: You would never catch Pummel in an interjection of surprise
- 40: Glad to sit next a warmer neighbour
- 41: Hence the lot of Mixtus affects me pathetically
- 42: But we have seen what has been the result to poor Mixtus
- 43: Mixtus is with him immediately
- 44: Though not himself reckoned among them
- 45: Mais le ridicule qui est quelque part
- 46: Makes every passion preposterous or obscene
- 47: With its idiotic puns and farcical attitudes
- 48: Qu'elle est la meme chose que la nature
- 49: Like the return phrases of a melody
- 50: Took the place of the low word Penny
- 51: Or hiss these are native tendencies
- 52: But as all the world knows that nine thirteens will yield
- 53: Which lay unexpectedly in the small Skunk
- 54: The Macaw became loudly incoherent
- 55: Ganymede was once a girlishly handsome precocious youth
- 56: The writer is known to be young
- 57: To cast away an epithet or remark that turns up cheaply
- 58: Enfeebling the energies of indignation and scorn
- 59: I take very little sugar myself
- 60: As a mark of high imaginative endowment
- 61: And an equally lax memory of events
- 62: Io riconobbi i miei non falsi errori
- 63: May easily find the predominating talker a nuisance
- 64: Especially when our flavour is all we have to give
- 65: And I grieve to think that poor Pepin
- 66: More passionate and more philosophical
- 67: The comedy sinks to an accessory
- 68: She lived in the considerable provincial town of Pumpiter
- 69: Give me your opinion of these opinions
- 70: Vibrio is a poor little tippling creature
- 71: And requesting them to read her album of critical opinions
- 72: Rather than in the original appetite of vanity
- 73: But I am sorry for Sir Gavial Mantrap
- 74: Which is the bond of societies
- 75: Let us pronounce him nevertheless flagrantly immoral
- 76: Irreconcilable opposition between intellect and morality
- 77: How then can machines supersede us
- 78: For every machine would be perfectly educated
- 79: What demons so potent as molecular movements
- 80: To discern likeness amidst diversity
- 81: Let us know who were our forefathers
- 82: Must belong to a nation of this order
- 83: Many Conservatives became Zealots
- 84: Asserting their liberty to restrain tyrants
- 85: While breeding vices in those who hold power
- 86: The full privileges of citizenship
- 87: The leader of the Liberal party in Germany is a Jew
- 88: Its vowels stretched and twisted
- 89: Which has created the varying genius of nations
- 90: Once ordering a lady patient not to eat salad
- 91: Whether in proletaries or in Jews