Eric, or Little by Little

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Barker was put on next. He bungled through the Latin in a grating, irresolute sort of way, with several false quantities, for each of which the next boy took him up. Then he began to construe;—a frightful confusion of nominatives without verbs, accusatives translated as ablatives, and adverbs turned into prepositions, ensued, and after a hopeless flounder, during which Mr Gordon left him entirely to himself, Barker came to a full stop; his catastrophe was so ludicrous, that Eric could not help joining in the general titter. Barker scowled. This isn’t to say that I’m going to pretend Eric is a forgotten masterpiece. It is, it seems to me, quite a bad novel — but bad in an interesting, and symptomatic way. I’m teaching a course on Children’s Literature this year, and I have put this book on the syllabus because a major strand of the 20-week course is school literature, up to and including Harry Potter, bears its mark. Certainly Eric was staggeringly influential and popular in its day; it’s one reason the name ‘Eric’ came into modern vogue. But, let’s make no bony bones about it, it’s not a good novel. Here’s Jeffrey Richards, in Happiest Days: The Public Schools in English Fiction (Manchester University Press 1988), summarising reactions:

Entries "Æiríkʀ", "Æi-", in: Nordiskt runnamnslexikon (2002) by Lena Peterson at the Swedish Institute for Linguistics and Heritage (Institutet för språk och folkminnen). Entry "EIN" at Nordic Names. Retrieved 19 June 2017. I don’t want to labour the point, except to say: Eric is at least as much about death and the pain of bereavement as it is about sex and the dangers of masturbation. In this, it is the heir to a long tradition of mournful (or if you prefer: morbid) stories of child death that characterise 18th and 19th-century writing for and about children. The Victorians faced death more straightforwardly than we do today, I think; they were less embarrassed by it, and better equipped with social protocols for handling it. General Erich Von Klinkerhoffen, the boss of Colonel Kurt Von Strohm, Captain Alberto Bertorelli, Captain Hans Geering and Lieutenant Hubert Gruber in the TV series 'Allo 'Allo! Frank Nuessel (1992). The Study of Names: A Guide to the Principles and Topics. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. p.11. Archived from the original on 2017-07-06.She looked up from her work after he had gone, and sighed. In spite of the sunshine and balm of the bright weather, a sense of heaviness and foreboding oppressed her. Everything looked smiling and beautiful, and there was an almost irresistible contagion in the mirth of her young cousin, but still she could not help feeling sad. It was not merely that she would have to part with Eric, “but that bright boy,” thought Fanny, “what will become of him? I have heard strange things of schools; oh, if he should be spoilt and ruined, what misery it would be. Those baby lips, that pure young heart, a year may work sad change in their words and thoughts!” She sighed again, and her eyes glistened as she raised them upwards, and breathed a silent prayer. Russell, begin,” said the master; and immediately the boy who had handed Eric his Caesar began reading a few sentences, and construed them very creditably, only losing a place or two. He had a frank open face, bright intelligent fearless eyes, and a very taking voice and manner. Eric listened admiringly, and felt sure he should like him. The two sixth-form boys hoped to pass by unobserved, as they did not wish for a rencontre with our hero under such circumstances. But they saw Wildney pointing to them, and, from the fits of laughter which followed his remarks, they had little doubt that they were the subject of the young gentleman’s wit. This is never a pleasant sensation; but they observed that Eric made a point of not looking their way, and went on in silence. Eric, or Little by Little is an 1858 novel by Frederic W. Farrar. It follows Eric Williams, a boy attending Roslyn School. He makes friends and achieves success both socially and academically, but also encounters bullies, bad influences, and the temptation to abandon his morals for popularity.

But it must be admitted that he made matters worse by his own bursts of passion. His was not the temper to turn the other cheek; but, brave and spirited as he was, he felt how utterly hopeless would be any attempt on his part to repel force by force. He would have tried some slight conciliation, but it was really impossible with such a boy as his enemy. Barker never gave him even so much as an indifferent look, much less a civil word. Eric loathed him, and the only good and happy part of the matter to his own mind was, that conscientiously his only desire was to get rid of him, and be left alone, while he never cherished a particle of revenge.He pointed to a party of boys, four or five, all lying on a pleasant grass bank, smoking pipes. Prominent among them was Eric, stretched at ease, and looking up at the clouds, towards which curled the puffed fumes of his meerschaum, a gift of Wildney’s. That worthy was beside him similarly employed. Among Slavic languages, most using the Latin alphabet borrow Erik, but there also exists Polish Eryk. The name is adapted into Cyrillic as Russian Э́йрик (Éyrik) or Э́рик (Érik), and Ukrainian Е́рік (Érik). The Baltic languages use forms such as Latvian Ēriks and Lithuanian Erikas. [19] [20] [21] Douglas-Fairhurst notes: ‘Farrar’s ripple is a refrain which invests the physical world with the enduring effects of an absent body, material with moral influence, and its regular reappearance means that the lines of his novel spin a moral web which is designed to clung to the reader as another form of refrain: the solemn injunction, “no more” [163]