savage, literally. I don't bear chastisement submissively. I confess
all my failures. I was lacking in filial respect towards my parents.
I have been irreverent and disobedient to my superiors. I have argued
with them, instead of meekly submitting my will to theirs. I have given
them nicknames, labels that stick, that annoy them by revealing mental
and corporeal characteristics of which they are not proud. For example,
I said that the violet legs of my college-rector were formed like
little Jacobean communion-rails; and I nicknamed a certain domestic
prelate the Greek for _Muddy-Mind_, βορβοροθυμοϛ. I haven't done
these things out of really vicious wanton cruelty: but out of pride
in my own powers of penetration and perception, or out of culpable
frivolity. I confess that I have been wanting in love, patience,
sincerity, justice, towards my neighbour. Selfishness, self-will, and
a fatuous desire to be distinct from other people, have caused these
breaches of God's law. That desire nearly always is unconscious or
subconscious: seldom deliberate. I am unkind with my bitter tongue
and pen: for example, I made a jibe of the scrofula of a publisher. I
am impatient with mental or natural weakness: for example I brought
tears into a schoolboy's eyes by my remarks when he recorded Edward
III.'s words to Philippa in reference to the six burgesses of Calais
as 'Dam, I can deny you nothing, but I wish you had been otherwhere.'
I am insincere, sinfully not criminally. I mean that I delight in
bewildering others by posing as a monument of complex erudition, when I
really am a very silly simpleton. I am unjust, in my readiness to judge
on insufficient evidence: by my habit of believing all I hear,--that's
a tremendously salient fault of mine:--and by telling or repeating
detrimental stories. I confess the sin of detraction. I have told
improper stories: not of the ordinary revolting kind, but those which
are exquisite or witty or recondite. The koprolalian kind, those which
are common in colleges and among the clergy, I have had the injustice
to label _Roman Catholic Stories_. If it were necessary to designate
them with particularity, the classic epithet _Milesian_ would serve:
but it is never necessary. I have not often offended in this way: but
now and then, according to the company in which I have happened to
be. I confess that I have sinned against myself--for example, I have
not avoided ease and luxury. I have only been too glad to enjoy them
when they came in my way. I have been fastidious in my person, my
tastes, my dress, affecting delicate habits, likes, and dislikes. I
hate getting up early in the morning; and do it with a bad grace. I
am dainty in my diet. I never have conquered my natural antipathy to
flesh-meat, especially to entrails such as sweet-breads and kidneys.
I abhor fish-meat on account of its abominable stench. Formerly, I
never would sit at a table where fish-meat was served. I can do that
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