Lab
Library
Journal
Shop
Sign in
to keep
Share image
1
349
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
·
W. N. P. Barbellion
329
August
1.
A
Jeremiad
When
I
resigned
my
appointment
last
month,
no
one
knows
what
I
had
to
give
up.
But
I
know.
Tho'
if
I
say
what
I
know
no
one
is
compelled
to
believe
me
excepting
out
of
charity.
It
will
never
be
discovered
whether
what
I
am
going
to
state
is
not
simply
despairing
bombast.
My
few
intimate
friends
and
relatives
are
entirely
innocent
of
science,
not
to
say
zoology,
and
all
they
realise
is
the
significant
fact
that
I
am
prone
to
go
extravagant
lengths
in
conversation.
But
you
may
take
it
or
leave
it:
I
was
the
ablest
junior
on
the
staff
and
one
of
the
ablest
zoologists
in
the
place--but
my
ability
was
always
muffled
by
the
inferior
work
they
gave
me
to
do.
My
last
memoir
published
last
December
was
the
best
of
its
kind
in
treatment,
method
and
technique
that
ever
issued
from
the
institution--I
do
not
say
the
most
important.
It
was
trivial--my
work
always
was
trivial
because
they
put
me
in
a
mouldy
department
where
all
the
work
was
trivial
and
the
methods
used
as
primitive,
slipshod
and
easy
as
those
of
Fabricius,
the
idea
being
that
as
I
had
enjoyed
no
academic
career
I
was
unsuited
to
fill
other
posts
then
vacant--one,
work
on
the
Cœlenterates
and
another
on
Vermes,
both
rarely
favoured
by
amateurs
and
requiring
laboratory
training.
Later,
I
had
the
mortification
of
seeing
these
posts
filled
by
men
whose
powers
I
by
no
means
felt
inclined
to
estimate
as
greater
than
my
own.
Meanwhile,
I
who
had
been
dissecting
for
dear
life
up
and
down
the
whole
Animal
Kingdom
in
a
poorly
equipped
attic
laboratory
at
home,
with
no
adequate
instruments,
was
bitterly
disappointed
to
find
still
less
provision
made
even
in
a
so-called
Scientific
Institution
so
grandly
styled
the
British
Museum
(N.H.).
On
my
first
arrival
I
was
presented
with
a
pen,
ink,
paper,
ruler,
and
an
enormous
instrument
of
steel
which
on
enquiry
I
found
to
be
a
paper
cutter.
I
asked
for
my
microscope
and
microtome.
I
ought
to
have
asked
what
Form
I
was
in.
Marker
Marker
Fine marker
White-out
Fine white-out
Circle
Paint
Unmarker
Hand
Scalpel
Dice
Sieve
Purify
Undo
Redo
Start over
