When once more alone, I reviewed the information I had got; looked into my heart, examined its thoughts and feelings, and endeavoured to bring back with a strict hand such as had been straying through imagination’s boundless and trackless waste, into the safe fold of common sense. (Jane Eyre)
Is ‘such’ a pronoun, indicating ‘its thoughts and feelings’? Is ‘as’ a relative modifying ‘such’?
Answer
I ... endeavoured to bring back ... such as had been straying
Is ‘such’ a pronoun, indicating ‘its thoughts and feelings’? Is ‘as’ a relative modifying ‘such’?
I think you've got it. This use of such as must be distinguished from its ordinary use to mean like or for example, where the phrase acts as a complex preposition.
This use of as as a relativizer is dying today in formal English, if not quite dead; it has generally been replaced by that. It probably lingers with such only because of the associated collocation such as. However, it is still employed in dialect; I have heard and read it in British dialogue, and in my own native dialect you very frequently heard things like That's something as I don't like to hear or Give it to them as have need of it.
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