Re: Humbug in the Pickwickian sense?
Robert Newsom (rnewsom@BENFRANKLIN.HNET.UCI.EDU)
Sat, 26 Dec 1998 16:29:00 -0800
Dear Mr. Dickens,
Please not to pay attention to this silliness. As everybody knows, Mr.
Hyde is an evil character in a novella by a gentleman you do not have the
pleasure of knowing, Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Professor Robert Newsom, Department of English and Comparative Literature
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-2650 U S A
Phone:(949) 824-6744 Internet: rnewsom@uci.edu
On Sat, 26 Dec 1998, Jeffrey S. Farmer wrote:
> Dear Mr. Dickens,
>
> Have you, by chance, been following the impeachment proceedings in the
> U.S. House of Representatives? If you have, perhaps you are aware that
> the House Judiciary Committee (the committee that drafted and voted out
> articles of impeachment for consideration by the whole House) is chaired
> by a portly, white haired, kindly, yet rather opinionated gentleman from
> Illinois named Henry Hyde. Henry Hyde (I say, although I do not know the
> man) is a humbug. That is, if one accepts, as a principle, that all
> politicians are humbugs, and acknowledges, as a matter of fact, that
> Henry Hyde is a politician, it follows that Henry Hyde is a humbug. The
> question is, what sort of humbug? Is he a humbug in the ordinary sense,
> or in the Pickwickian sense? How does one tell the difference?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Jeff Farmer
> Stow, Ohio, USA
>
> --
>