Coming into a London drawing-room with his intense peasant suspiciousess and distrust of his fellow-men, with his equally intense peasant expectation that here at last might be found the society of the imagination, the brilliant talk and lofty thought which he had believed in from the time of earliest musings and eager hopes conceived in his father's farmyard or among the beasts on the Annandale farm — he turned with disgust and silent anathema, finding it all empty talk and foolish rivalry: but once seduced into a corner with — it scarcely mattered whom — looking into a pair of unaffected human eyes . . . and the man became tolerable, if not lovable. [115]
References
Oliphant, Mrs. [Margaret]. The Victorian Age of English Literature. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1892.
Last modified: 20 February 2002