Melville's and Bartleby's flatulence issue

As per the politics of fear and flatulence post below, Sean Chadwell, erudite professor at a university in the south Texas desert, and occasionally successful auto-mechanic, sends this:

Here's something kind of complementary from "Bartleby the Scrivener" (bearing in mind, of course, that the narrator is a nitwit):

Revolving all these things, and coupling them with the recently discovered fact that he made my office his constant abiding place and home, and not forgetful of his morbid moodiness; revolving all these things, a prudential feeling began to steal over me. My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in proportion as the forlornness of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that same melancholy merge into fear, that pity into repulsion. So true it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul be rid of it.

Faced with Bartleby's intractable passivity (or passive intractability?) -- and I always argue, in fear -- the narrator winds up moving an entire office to avoid directly confronting Bartleby himself. Aristotle, Melville. Who else is there?