Silent, grim, colossal, the big city has ever stood against its
revilers. They call it hard as iron; they say that no pulse of pity beats in its bosom; they compare its streets with lonely forests and deserts of lava.
The acerbic nature of the 1871 appraisal was partly driven by the critical and mocking house-style of The Saturday Review, which induced those who were its targets to call it the '
Reviler' and which had readily been embraced by Stephen as a Higher Journalist in the 1860s.
Where Devin Brown sees in Revilian associations with reveille, or 'wake up!' in French, this lord's name is closer to the Old French
reviler, which is 'to revile,' or 'assail with abusive language,' indeed from which we get our English word revile.
'son of a racist, drink-sodden,
reviler of women, homophobic.
reviler, as well as by a portfolio valuation mandate for the largest domestic real estate fund in India and a mandate from the iconic Australian retail brand, David Jones.
"In honour of John Batchelor, who in his early life left his country for his country's good; who on his return devoted his life and energies to setting class against class, a traitor to the Crown, a
reviler of the aristocracy, a hater of the clergy, a panderer to the multitude; who, as first Chairman of the Cardiff School Board squandered funds to which he did not contribute; who is sincerely mourned by unpaid creditors to the amount of 50,000 pounds; who at the dose of a wasted and misspent life died a pauper, this monument, to the eternal disgrace of Cardiff, is erected by sympathetic Radicals."
His words closely anticipate the scene on a fourth-century Apulian volute krater (Boston 03.804) that offers an all but unique extant representation of the death of Thersites, an incident, our sources tell us, prompted by a scurrilous piece of abuse that the
reviler directed at Achilles concerning his love for Penthesilea.
A literate boy, Themba, becomes a
reviler, using indecent language against someone who has done absolutely nothing to warrant such a verbal attack.
One fellow merchant defaced it with yellow paint and tar and the Echo's sister paper the Western Mail ran an editorial describing Batchelor as "a traitor to the Crown, a
reviler of the aristocracy, a hater of the clergy, a panderer to the multitude..."