| 词汇 | the admirable crichton |
| 词源 | the Admirable Crichton. The perfect man, the perfect ser- vant. James Crichton, born in 1560, was an English prodigy who while still in his teens earned his Master of Arts degree, mastered over a dozen languages, all the sciences, and achieved some fame as a poet and theologian. The fabled prodigy was also said to be handsome and without peer as a swordsman—“All perfect, finish’d to the fingernail,” Tennyson wrote of him. Unfortunately, this ideal man proved either un- wise or human enough to steal the heart of a prince’s lady while traveling in Italy and was assassinated by three men in the prince’s hire. Crichton was only 25 or so when he died. His name, in the form of The Admirable Crichton, was long used as a synonym for the perfect man, and when playwright James M. Barrie used it as the name of his butler hero in The Admirable Crichton (1902) it became synonymous with a per- fect servant. |
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