Explore "The Hermits" by Charles Kingsley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Of all such anchorites of the far East, the most remarkable, perhaps, was the once famous Simeon Stylites-a name almost forgotten, save by antiquaries and ecclesiastics, till Mr. Tennyson made it once more notorious in a poem as admirable for its savage grandness, as for its deep knowledge of human nature. He has comprehended thoroughly, as it seems to me, that struggle between self-abasement and self-conceit, between the exaggerated sense of sinfulness and the exaggerated ambition of saintly honour, which must have gone on in the minds of these ascetics-the temper which could cry out one moment with perfect honesty-
"Although I be the basest of mankind, From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin;"