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'THEOPHRASTUS SUCH'
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in any scientific jargon; indeed, we have less of sesquipedalian technicalities than in Daniel Deronda; but the whole tone is scientific. Without indulging in any such elaborate antitheses as are the glory of the schoolboy's essay, it may be said that the artistic and scientific modes of treating human nature differ in this, that science seeks to find general analogies, while art aims at individual realities. The sketchy character of these studies no doubt brings into greater prominence their want of artistic reality. If the author had elaborated any of them into novels or even into 'scenes,' the artist instinct would have given life to the dead bones of scientific analysis. And what is more, the reader would have been spared that unsympathy with her own puppets which may be scientific impartiality, but is certainly inartistic harshness. Humour would then have dealt tenderly with those deficiencies which wit, and that of a somewhat lumbering character, now mercilessly exposes. One of the sections deals with the habit of scoffing and parody as 'debasing the moral currency,' yet what is it but debasing the artistic currency to ring the changes on Grampus, Lord Narwhal, Prof. Sperm N. Whale, Dugong, and Butzkopf (=Delphinus orca)? The name Merman brings into humorous contrast his more human qualities; but is