"There is something very pompous in his style. – And what can he mean by apologising for being next in the entail? – We cannot suppose he would help it if he could. – Could he be a sensible man, sir?"
"No, my dear, I think not. I have great hopes of finding him quite the reverse. There is a mixture of servility and self-importance in his letter, which promises well. I am impatient to see him"
– Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 13. Elizabeth and her father are commenting on Mr. Collins and his letter to the Bennets, whose Longbourn estate he is to inherit and which he is about to visit. In the letter he expresses the hope that "the circumstance of my being next in the entail of Longbourn estate will be kindly overlooked on your side, and not lead you to reject the offered olive-branch." We gain a good glimpse of Mr. Collins’s character from the Bennets’ comments – pompous, servile to his patron Lady Catherine de Bourgh and for a clergyman unusually vain and full of his own self-importance.