MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON AFTER all, why shouldn't I ? Several people have written to me regarding the word "doriphore," asking me to explain more exactly what I mean by this half-French, half-Hellenic, noun. I admit immediately that the name has about it a precious, esoteric, even affected, appearance and is, as such, irritating to decent and unpretentious people. In selecting the word from many possible candidates it was my intention to provoke rather than to assuage, to challenge rather than to comfort. I used the expression to designate a special type of pest or parasite that hangs as a louse upon the locks of literature. I needed a word descriptive of the exotic, un-English, origin of the animal, and one which, by its very sound, would suggest the tortuous persistence of its ways. I needed a word which, by its varied associations, would indicate the insensitiveness of the beast, its powers of penetration, its habit of feeding upon the leaves of others, its curious combina- tion of the barbaric with the cultured, the ruthless with the epicene, the pedantic with the unimaginative. I needed some- thing, moreover, to describe the philistinism of the pest, its destructive purposes, its crass vaunting, its inability to distin- guish between the letter and the spirit, its passion for rules, regulations and formulas. I wanted a word suggestive of the questing prig. If you come to think of it, no substantive in the English language combines, as does doriphore, all these e intimations. Its very shape, cork-screwed and sharp, indicates a foreign origin and a method both elaborate and crude. By the entomologist it will be recognised at once as one of the most destructive and dangerous of all the coleoptera, since what insinuating beast can compare with Leptinotarsa decemlineata ? And I was happy to know that in the minds of many it was associated with a peculiarly soulless form of oppression. * * * * Originally, I imagined, the word was employed to designate the soldiers of Philip of Macedon who formed the third rank of the phalanx and who were armed with the sarissa, a pike measuring no less than nineteen feet in length. I have, I admit, no authority for this assumption, beyond the fact that in the Greek language my little word must mean the men who carried the long spear. These phalangist associations were welcome to me, since they suggested something barbaric, clumsy, impenetrable, and utterly ruthless; something destructive of the gay individuality of the Greek genius. How and when and why the term was transferred from the Macedonians (a wholly charmless race) to the Colorado beetle passes my comprehen- sion or my leisure for research. Perhaps some doriphore will write 4 the Spectator, pointing out how unfounded are my deductions, and how abysmal my ignorance. In any case the word " doriphore " is employed by the French to describe the chrysomelid beetle that fed upon the solanum rostratum of the Rocky Mountains and spread the potato-blight across the Atlantic. Thereafter occurred the second European war and the occupation of France by the Nazi forces. The French underground used the word " doriphore " almost as a code- word to designate the occupying enemy. Here then was the very word I needed. Its Macedonian origin indicated the triumph of dull force against the amateurish methods of the City States. Its entomological meaning suggested a crude parasite, reared in the wild west upon a local weed, and there- after extending its devastating habits to deprive civilised peoples of a valuable food. Its application to the German occupation authorities indicated the reaction of a proud and sensitive race to the unimaginative methods employed and imposed by their oppressors. The Colorado beetle thus became for me the symbol and the eponym of a personal dislike. * * * * The doriphore, as I have said, is the type of questing prig, who derives intense satisfaction from pointing out the errors of others. His mind is mechanical and precise; his memory functions with the dispiriting regularity of an electronic brain; his self-assertiveness is an agony to all modest men; when he is not busy with his cross-word puzzles, he approaches the works of others as something to be nibbled and consumed. It is not, however, the mind of the dqriphore that distresses me, so much as his soul. Nobody need be annoyed if, in the quietude of his study, with his books of reference around him, the doriphore spends happy hours checking whether an event occurred on March 22nd, 1767 or on March 19th. What is so abominable about the doriphore is that he is unable to keep his accuracy to himself; without a moment's reflection, with- out permitting his conceit to be checked for one instant by any sense of proportion, he will immediately sit down at his desk and write a letter to The Times Literary Supplement, pointing out that the Professor ought to have said March 19th and not March 22nd. If he were in fact the considerate scholar that he imagines himself to be, he would communicate his correction privately to the Professor, who would (or might) be grateful to him for his emendation. But the doriphore is not a person who allows his small and poisonous light to glow unseen; he is determined to acquire fame for superior memory or leisure, and off he goes vaunting in the public prints. Surely such a man is as despicable in his vanity, as crude in his self- display, as the school-boy who snubs his comrade with the words " I thought everyone knew that ? "
Nobody, I trust, could have a greater reverence than I have for all branches of learning; nobody could condemn with great acerbity all indolent or slipshod work. Yet I should be ashamed indeed if, on reading a work of research and erudition, I allowed my attention to be diverted from the magnitude of the theme, or the beauty of its style and composition, by a selfish preoccupation with misprints. The doriphore who notes these inaccuracies in the fly-leaf of his own books is committing no mortal offence; but the one who scribbles his comments in the margins of library books is displaying real moral turpitude; and the one who seeks, in his blindness, to enhance his own prestige by publicly displaying his own accuracy of detail, ought to be seized by Apollo, tied to a tree, and slowly flayed alive. I ask all doriphores to examine their own consciences. Are they positive that, in nibbling so ardently at the leaves, they have not forgotten the purpose or the succulence of the potato that rests below ? Are they positive that the emotions of self-esteem aroused within them by this un-apollonian activity are creditable emotions ? Are they positive that, in displaying to the public their own pedantic philistinism, they are not actuated by a desire to sug- gest that they are themselves superior in knowledge and pre- cision to those at whom they nibble ? Let them, with their habits of investigation analyse for a moment the quality of the pleasure they derive from their gluttony. How large is the ratio of conceit in the satisfaction they experience, as compared to the element of elucidation or scholarship ? I ask them to submit themselves to this test of self-examination. Virtuton videant, intabescantque relicta.
Ignorance and error are human faults and should be handled with tender humanity; they should not be seized upon as occasions for personal triumph. It is a Macedonian, a German. thing to do to derive pleasure from the mistakes of others or to be delighted when Shakespeare nods. It may be that I am not given to confuse Czechoslovakia with Yugoslavia, to pro- nounce the word " Monaco " with an accent on the second syllable, or to suppose that Byron wrote " Oh, woman ! in our hours of ease." But when I consider the croquet-lawn of roY knowledge, as compared to the vast tundras of my ignorance. I am humbled into silence rather than stimulated to compose sharp letters to the Literary Supplement. Ignorance, as Wilde remarked, is a tender fruit: " touch it, and the bloom is gone. Knowledge is sacred; it should not be used for self-praise.
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