“These little things are great to little man”

“These little things are great to little man” is the epigraph to Chapter LXIII of Book VII of Middlemarch. At the threshold of “Two Temptations,” the line turns attention toward the scale of ordinary experience: what may seem slight from a distance can loom large to the person whose life is touched by it.

Text and Placement

The sentence is attributed to Goldsmith and appears directly beneath the chapter heading. Its placement makes it a framing principle rather than a remark spoken by a character: before the chapter’s action begins, the reader is invited to measure events not by outward grandeur but by their human consequence.

Meaning and Narrative Function

The epigraph’s contrast between “little things” and “little man” suggests that significance is relative to the scale of an individual life. It prepares for a narrative attentive to concerns that can be dismissed as minor by observers yet matter greatly to those involved. The phrasing also lends the idea a social edge: the modest scale of a person’s influence does not make that person’s cares trivial.

Relation to the Chapter’s Opening

The chapter begins with Mr. Toller asking Camden Farebrother at a Christmas dinner-party whether he has seen much of Tertius Lydgate lately. Farebrother says that he has not, explaining that he is out of the way and Lydgate is busy. The epigraph’s emphasis on small matters precedes this conversational exchange, where a seemingly casual question about a doctor’s recent absence opens onto the concerns and judgments circulating in local society.