Lucifer is a damned fine fellow, and I hope he may win

Phillip Pullman wrote an Introduction for the 2008, Oxford University Press edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Pullman starts his Introduction as follows:

A correspondent once told me a story—which I've never been able to trace, and I don't know whether it's true—about a bibulous, semi-literate, ageing country squire two hundred years ago or more, sitting by his fireside listening to Paradise Lost being read aloud. He's never read it himself; he doesn't know the story at all; but as he sits there, perhaps with a pint of port at his side and with a gouty foot propped up on a stool, he finds himself transfixed.
  Suddenly he bangs the arm of his chair, and exclaims 'By God! I know not what the outcome may be, but this Lucifer is a damned fine fellow, and I hope he may win!'
  Which are my sentiments exactly.

Thinking that tracing this story to its source might be a good test for AI, I asked Google’s AI and ChatGPT. Google AI obviously had no idea, and offered up a mix of mild platitudes, plot summary and hallucinations; ChatGPT was somewhat similar, but identified Pullman as the source: it was unable to trace the story any further than Pullman. Having spent an afternoon doing what Pullman was unable to do in 2008, I now have some sympathy for Pullman, Google’s AI and ChatGPT.

Rather than recount in full, step-by-tedious-step process by which I clawed my way back through time, pre-dating one version of the story after another, I will present what I believe to be the first version of the story, and then summarise what seems to have happened to the story afterwards.

The story originates with a work of fiction, Realmah, by Sir Arthur Helps, which first appeared in Macmillan’s Magazine in 1867–68, and was published by Macmillan, in 2 volumes, in 1868.

In Chapter 5 of Realmah (which appeared in December 1867), we get the following scene:

It fell to the lot of a very saintly, good man, to have to travel with [Lord] Thurlow, who was then Attorney General. A journey to the North was a serious thing in those times, and my saintly friend dreaded the long journey, with the blustering Attorney-General, who he was sure would utter many naughty words before they arrived at York.
  They had hardly left London before the good man remarked, "We shall have a long journey, Mr. Attorney, and so I thought I would bring some books to amuse us. I daresay it is a long time since you have read Milton's 'Paradise Lost.' Shall I read some of it to you? It will remind us of our younger days." (In those days men read great works; for there were not so many books of rubbishing fiction, to which the reading energies of the present day are directed.) "Oh, by all means!" said Thurlow, "I have not read a word of Milton for years."
  The good man began to read out his Milton: presently he came to the passage where Satan exclaims, "Better to reign in hell than serve in Heaven." Upon which Thurlow exclaimed, "A d—d fine fellow, and I hope he may win." My saintly friend in horror shut up his "Paradise Lost," and felt that it would be no good reading to the Attorney-General, if he was to be interrupted by such wicked expressions of sentiment.

The Lord Thurlow mentioned here is Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow (1731–1806), was Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain for fourteen years and under four Prime Ministers (1778–83, 1783–92). In 1906, this “blustering Attorney-General” was accidently mis-identified as Lord Eldon, i.e.: John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon (1751–1838), Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, 1801–6, 1807–27. Other changes to this story occurred in the most colourful lines attributed to Lords Thurlow / Eldon:

"A d—d fine fellow, and I hope he may win." (1867, 1869, 1871)
"D—d fine fellow! I hope he'll win!" (1878, 1884)
"A d—d fine fellow. I hope he may win." (1909)
"A damned fine fellow! I hope he will win." (1925)
"This is a fine fellow. I hope he'll win." (1933)
"A damned fine fellow. I hope he may win" (1984, 1988)

As you can see, the only stable parts here are "fine fellow"; "I hope"; and "win"—the ellipsis of "damned" making it impossible to search for, and the change from "Lord Thurlow" to "Lord Eldon" eliminating all the pre-1909 examples.

Returning to Pullman’s version of the story, it is clear that his characterisation of the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, being entertained in a post-chaise to York with a reading of Milton, as a "bibulous, semi-literate, ageing country squire … with a pint of port at his side and with a gouty foot propped up on a stool" is very wide of the mark.

Note also that Realmah is a utopian novel, set in a made-up prehistoric empire called ‘Sheviri,’ featuring detailed accounts of its government and religion. That is—much like Haywood’s Memoirs of Utopia—it related anecdotes about real British public figures in the form of "utopian" fiction.

Since Lord Thurlow died in 1806, and had last been Lord High Chancellor in 1792, this anecdote was generations old by 1867. It is possible that it was recorded earlier than 1867, but, if so, I haven’t been able to find it—yet. Based on this very unscientific test, it seems that we are still a long way from AI agents being able to duplicate the above research effort, and so we must be even further away from them being able to exceed our research efforts. When we reach the point when AI agents can exceed us, it is likely that many of the "bibulous, semi-literate, ageing country squires" of history, will be recognised as—as is the case with this one—a fiction, built upon a fiction.

The Scientific Silverfish and Moth Destroyer, ca. 1928

I recently bought the volume on the right above (The Works of Théophile Gautier), which is from the same series, and in the same binding, as the volume on the left (The Complete Romances of Voltaire … Eight Volumes in One). I have had the Voltaire since 1999, and regularly use its version of Candide in my teaching, and have long wanted more versions of Gautier's La Morte Amoureuse, since it is such an important and early representation of a female vampire, so I was very happy with this find.

The local bookshop that had the Gautier, had five more of these Walter Black volumes in the same soft leather bindings—Zola, Maupassant, Boccaccio, Balzac, and a Voltaire—but the prices were too high for me to buy any others, just for the sake of their matching bindings. Looking on eBay, I discovered someone else in Australia had nine volumes of this series (below), in the same bindings, for less than I paid for my Gautier (the listing is here), but I have so far resisted starting yet-another collection front.

Inside my Gautier, I found a card (above and below), which—at first glance—I took to be an abandoned bookmark. A closer look revealed that, although this may actually have been used as a bookmark, the purpose of the card was to "Scientifically Destroy" silverfish and moths.

As you can see above, the text reads:

THE SCIENTIFIC
SILVERFISH & MOTH DESTROYER.
—————
SIMPLY PLACE CARDS IN OR NEAR
ARTICLES TO BE PROTECTED.
—————
CONTENTS: 14 CARDS 1/- PER PACKET
DUGGAN'S 194 LIT. COLLINS ST. MELBOURNE, C.1.

The verso of the card has had some sort of insecticide painted onto it—you can see the brush strokes.

* * * * *

I was not surprised that I could find no record of these cards; but I was surprised that I was unable to find out anything very concrete about Duggan’s of Little Collins Street, Melbourne. This Facebook post suggests that Duggan’s might have been a 1940s dry-cleaning business, which was bought out by Fletcher Jones, the Australian "clothing manufacturer and retailer" (which shut down only in January of this year; "Fletcher Jones to Close All Stores After Nearly 100 Years in Australian Retail," 17 January 2026, online here).

If Duggan's was a dry cleaner, I suspect that these cards were intended to be slipped into the pockets of freshly dry-cleaned coats and trousers, rather than books. But it seems to have done a sterling job anyway: the Gautier remains in lovely condition.

The New Google Books Interface Sucks

I will now be using Internet Archive links, wherever possible, rather than Google Books links. Here is my "old man yelling at clouds" explanation of why (a 2002 meme that is now, probably, an indicator of age).

The new Google Books format has degraded (in my mind) their interface, with dynamic overlays that become opaque to hide basic information about an item containing a search "hit" as soon as it finishes loading, or as soon as you interact with a page in any way (mouse or keyboard strikes). Here are the three steps in pictures: page, clear overlay, opaque overlay:

NB the thin white "floating" status bar box, at lower left, shows "waiting" in the first image, "loading" in the second, and which has disappeared in the third. It still isn’t clear to me why Google Books pages sometimes turns opaque as soon as the page finishes loading, and at other times, only once you interact with the page. But it conveys no information in either scenario since, even in the latter case it becomes opaque if you try to screencap the book information (i.e., before you interact with the page in any other way). Want to see the top of a page, or a page number? Tough luck. Want to centre or enlarge a highlighted term? Lol! Everything except the overlay page, with its puny title-box, disappears.

The thus-hidden page, displaying actual, useful information (such as book title, author, date of publication etc.), can only be reached by shutting down the overlay with mouse busy-work—there is no keyboard shortcut for this. By disregarding a warning on this page—that "Classic Google Books will [soon?] be turned off"—it is possible (for now), with yet more mouse-work, to reach the Classic Google Books interface. I’ll explain why you might want to do this shortly.

The obscured underlying page, the parent page or under-page (?), of the new interface is, admittedly, a better-organised version of the "About this book" page of the Classic Google Books interface, which was also a click-through. However, the Classic Google Books landing pages, the pages reached via search hits, were much more informative, making it possible to more-quickly shut down useless search hits.

All that remains visible on the overlay of the new interface is the first twenty characters of the title: so, "British Museum Catalogue of Printed Books: Edited 1881-1889 by R ..., Volume 52" becomes "British Museum Catal…" (as above); "The Magazine of American History with Notes and Queries, Volume 17" becomes "The Magazine of Am…"; and "Catalogue of the Private Library of Mr. George S. Davis" becomes "Catalogue of the Priv…"

The URLs reached via this new interface are also much longer than those in Classic Book Books. So, for instance, at their shortest (i.e., with search terms and other elements omitted), the URLs are

Old GB URL: https://books.google.com/books?id=rwJGAQAAMAAJ

New GB URL: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Catalogue_of_the_Private_Library_of_Mr_G/rwJGAQAAMAAJ

and for a specific page

Old GB URL: https://books.google.com/books?id=rwJGAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA49

New GB URL: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Catalogue_of_the_Private_Library_of_Mr_G/rwJGAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA49

It is unclear who benefits from the longer URLs: an AI crawler only needs "rwJGAQAAMAAJ" and a human gains little (in anything) from "Catalogue_of_the_Private_Library_of_Mr_G"—not least, since many browsers hide full URLs anyway, and those few that display URLs would be unable to display a full URL which has not had search terms and other elements omitted, as I have above. Personally, since I compose these posts in HTML, I find it a lot easier to read and write with the shorter, simpler Classic URLs. A Classic URL, with its 12-character ID (**), is also a lot more satisfactory for scholarship (i.e., in print), when referring to an online reproduction of a book, since it is easier for the writer and publisher to typeset/format and for the user to transcribe the URL and ID code.

So, while it is possible (for now, but it is unclear how much longer it will be possible) to click through from a Google Books search hit to the “Classic” interface, and from there, find the short URL and 12-character ID code for a book, and from that to generate a page-specific short URL, as above, doing so is now awkward and time-consuming; and since—given the warning—there is no guarantee that these short URLs will continue to work once "Classic Google Books [is] turned off," I will use the Internet Archive where I can, even for items on Google Books..

(**) Not alphanumeric: Google Books uses alphanumeric characters plus underscores, but excluding other special characters, these being "word characters" (apparently).

Book Shop, Place of Worship

I was browsing for bookshops in Blackburn (Melbourne), when I spotted this:

(you have to imagine the "record scratch" sound-effect here): Did I read that right?!

Sweet! For comparison, here is the nearest "real" bookshop

So, what is a "Place of Worship"? Well, it turns out that it is not a Christian church, Jewish synagogue, Buddhist temple, Hindu mandir or Shinto shrine, each of which have their own symbols on Google Maps, nor (according to the post here) is it a Sikh gurdwara, Jain temple, Japanese Buddhist temple, or—in all liklihood—a pagan temple. It seems that this symbol…

…first appeared on Google Maps at the same time that the star-and-crescent symbol dissapeared, to (checks notes) "promote inclusivity" and to "avoid favouring one religion over another." I am guessing that this is also reason why there is no street number for this Place of Worship, and that Google Maps has deleted all post-2008 street-view data for one end of this street.

All of which is a shame, since I'd like to see any Book Shop that could accurately be described as a Place of Worship, and I have nothing but respect for any faith that so well captures my own sentiments in relation to book shops and book shopping. I'll have to resist the urge to visit this location to see the book shop for myself, in case I end up in a Nineteen Eighty-Four / Total Recall-type situation after Google remotely deletes the relevant data from my head.