Orthoptera

Orthoptera, the insects studied and displayed by the Vicar, appear in a conversation that turns a natural-history collection into a practical lesson for the young doctor Tertius Lydgate. Their carefully ordered drawers embody the Vicar’s patient interests, while his insistence that Lydgate inspect them tests the doctor’s resolve to remain independent of the people he serves.

The Vicar’s Collection

The Vicar says that he has made an exhaustive study of the district’s entomology and is pursuing both its fauna and flora, though he considers his work on insects the most complete. He remarks that the district is especially rich in Orthoptera, then invites Lydgate to look at the insects arranged in drawers. The specimens are displayed in fine gradation, with their names written in delicate script: a collection shaped by sustained observation and classification.

The Glass Monster and the Bargain

Lydgate’s attention, however, is drawn away from the drawers by a glass jar containing an “anencephalous monster.” When the Vicar notices his fascination, he jokingly proposes a barter: Lydgate can have the specimen if he examines the drawers and agrees with the Vicar about all his newly identified species. The Vicar presents this as useful discipline for a young doctor who must please patients in Middlemarch: Lydgate, he says, must learn to be bored. He ultimately lets him have the monster on his own terms, but still makes him scrutinize every drawer, laughing at himself as he persists in the exhibition.

Professional Independence and Its Cost

The insects serve as a concrete counterpoint to Lydgate’s confidence that a doctor should make his worth felt rather than humor everyone’s nonsense. The Vicar agrees in principle, but warns that independence depends on having real value and maintaining it—conditions few people can meet. A man may escape other people’s demands and become useless, or accept the harness of social service and pull alongside his fellows. The lesson is not simply to flatter patients: it is that professional work takes place among people whose expectations cannot be dismissed without consequence.

Lydgate explains that he chose provincial practice partly to avoid the “empty bigwiggism” and “obstructive trickery” he had observed while studying in London. He expects the country’s lesser pretensions to knowledge to leave him freer to follow his own course. The Vicar recognizes his good start, since medicine is work for which Lydgate feels suited, but cautions him not to assume his independence is secure. The display of Orthoptera thus anchors a larger exchange about the compromises, limits, and disciplines that attend a vocation.