Monday, January 30, 2023
The Little Reptile
Theodore Dalrymple, "Sympathy for the Underdog,"
New English Review (January 2023):
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Hazlitt begins his essay on the pleasures of hating, published in 1826, with an account of his near-arachnophobia. He sees a spider coming towards him in his study but forbears to crush it as his forebears might have done, shooing it rather to safety under matting, which he gallantly lifts for it so that it may make good its escape. (He calls it 'the little reptile,' suggesting a somewhat shaky grasp of animal taxonomy.)Probably by reptile Hazlitt simply meant creeping thing (Latin repto = creep, crawl).
