THE LONG HISTORY OF “IN SHORT”: MR. MICAWBER, LETTER-WRITERS, AND LITERARY MEN

“‘LETTERS!’ … ‘I BELIEVE HE DREAMS IN LETTERS!’” so exclaims Betsey Trotwood of Mr. Micawber, the epistolary aficionado of Charles Dickens'sDavid Copperfield(664; ch. 54). David's aunt Betsey is not the only one to wonder at Micawber's prolific, albeit prolix, nature. His letters have made him a favorite of nineteenth- and twentieth-century readers alike; his “in short” has become one of the most memorable Dickensian tag-lines. But however much attention Micawber's epistolary endeavors garner, this notice fails to raise him to the position of respected writer–the position reserved for the eponymous hero of the novel. In the usual line of thinking, David stands as the ideal literary man while Micawber molders in the world of fantasy and comedy in which J. B. Priestley, James Kincaid, and J. Hillis Miller so securely position him.

Remarks on Plutarch's De Vitando Aere Alieno

It is a common, and irritating, practice of Plutarch's to begin his prooemium with a comparison or a contrast. Perhaps the same move may be appropriate for an essay in the interpretation of an author to whom Professor Dodds, forty years ago, wrote one of the most charming and penetrating introductions. We might put it like this: to be in debt is indeed bad, dangerous and corrupting; but to acknowledge debts of learning and friendship in the manner this volume intends, is both καλόν and ἡδύ.De vitando aere alieno is a vigorous and lively discourse. Style and subject mark it as somewhat out of Plutarch's usual line. It raises a swarm of problems. Is it genuine? Is it complete? Does it reflect a real crisis? The preliminary to any answer to these, and similar, questions seems to me to be an analysis of the speech as it stands, an attempt to show its connections of thought. This is all I shall try to do here.The thesis ὅτι οὐ δεῖ δανείζεσθαι involves two distinct propositions: that borrowing is a bad thing (A); and that there are ways of avoiding it (B). To look at it in this way brings it into line with the moral failings that Plutarch discusses in treatises like πϵρὶ φιλοπλουτίας or πϵρὶ δυσωπίας where the principal heads of the subject are naturally the attack on the vice and the suggestions for cure. Now both these basic propositions readily admit amplification. Proposition A can be enlarged by any means that paints the picture in darker colours, for example by representing the debtor as a damned soul (828F, 830F) or as a drowning man (831D). Proposition B leads at once to the hackneyed topics of the renunciation of luxury and the true freedom of the self-sufficient life. Plutarch did, I think, conceive of his subject under these heads. Given his moral preoccupation, this was almost inevitable. And in fact he treats the two themes turn and turn about, and we can detect the passage from one to the other, even where it is masked by the syntactical structure