About Scythrop Glowry

I, Scythrop Glowry (whose namesake's skull I have drunk Madiera out of in his honor), am the son of that Mr. Glowry who is so famous among his friends for his excellent melancholy and dilapidated spirits.

My friendship-bound acquaintances include The Hon. Mr. Listless and the transcendental philosopher of such great respectability for never having given anyone information, Ferdinando Flosky. And as for the acquaintance with whom I am bound in love eternally, that is my charming wife Claretta (née Vonvinyard). Her family are celebrated winemakers.

(Also, I am the creator of the Entertaining Literary Discussion group.)

...

"This only son and heir Mr Glowry had christened Scythrop, from the name of a maternal ancestor, who had hanged himself one rainy day in a fit of _toedium vitae_, and had been eulogised by a coroner's jury in the comprehensive phrase of _felo de se_; on which account, Mr Glowry held his memory in high honour, and made a punchbowl of his skull.

When Scythrop grew up, he was sent, as usual, to the public school, where a little learning was painfully beaten into him, and from thence to the university, where it was carefully taken out of him; and he was sent home like a well-threshed ear of corn, with nothing in his head: having finished his education to the high satisfaction of the master and fellows of his college, who had, in testimony of their aprobation, presented him with a silver fish slice, on which his name figured at the head of a laudatory inscription in some semi-barbarous dialect of Anglo-Saxonised Latin."

- Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock (published 1818)