"Say, goddess, what ensued, when Raphael,

The affable archangel . . .

Eve

The story heard attentive, and was filled

With admiration, and deep muse, to hear

Of things so high and strange."

--Paradise Lost, B. vii.

If it had really occurred to Mr. Casaubon to think of Miss Brooke as a

suitable wife for him, the reasons that might induce her to accept him

were already planted in her mind, and by the evening of the next day

the reasons had budded and bloomed. For they had had a long

conversation in the morning, while Celia, who did not like the company

of Mr. Casaubon's moles and sallowness, had escaped to the vicarage to

play with the curate's ill-shod but merry children.

Dorothea by this time had looked deep into the ungauged reservoir of

Mr. Casaubon's mind, seeing reflected there in vague labyrinthine

extension every quality she herself brought; had opened much of her own

experience to him, and had understood from him the scope of his great

work, also of attractively labyrinthine extent. For he had been as

instructive as Milton's "affable archangel;" and with something of the

archangelic manner he told her how he had undertaken to show (what

indeed had been attempted before, but not with that thoroughness,

justice of comparison, and effectiveness of arrangement at which Mr.

Casaubon aimed) that all the mythical systems or erratic mythical

fragments in the world were corruptions of a tradition originally

revealed. Having once mastered the true position and taken a firm

footing there, the vast field of mythical constructions became

intelligible, nay, luminous with the reflected light of

correspondences. But to gather in this great harvest of truth was no

light or speedy work. His notes already made a formidable range of

volumes, but the crowning task would be to condense these voluminous

still-accumulating results and bring them, like the earlier vintage of

Hippocratic books, to fit a little shelf. In explaining this to

Dorothea, Mr. Casaubon expressed himself nearly as he would have done

to a fellow-student, for he had not two styles of talking at command:

it is true that when he used a Greek or Latin phrase he always gave the

English with scrupulous care, but he would probably have done this in

any case. A learned provincial clergyman is accustomed to think of his

acquaintances as of "lords, knyghtes, and other noble and worthi men,

that conne Latyn but lytille."

Dorothea was altogether captivated by the wide embrace of this

conception. Here was something beyond the shallows of ladies' school

literature: here was a living Bossuet, whose work would reconcile

complete knowledge with devoted piety; here was a modern Augustine who

united the glories of doctor and saint.




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