He had not had much foretaste of happiness in his previous life. To

know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an

enthusiastic soul. Mr. Casaubon had never had a strong bodily frame,

and his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too

languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it

went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking

of its wings and never flying. His experience was of that pitiable

kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that it should be

known: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness which has not mass enough

to spare for transformation into sympathy, and quivers thread-like in

small currents of self-preoccupation or at best of an egoistic

scrupulosity. And Mr. Casaubon had many scruples: he was capable of a

severe self-restraint; he was resolute in being a man of honor

according to the code; he would be unimpeachable by any recognized

opinion. In conduct these ends had been attained; but the difficulty

of making his Key to all Mythologies unimpeachable weighed like lead

upon his mind; and the pamphlets--or "Parerga" as he called them--by

which he tested his public and deposited small monumental records of

his march, were far from having been seen in all their significance.

He suspected the Archdeacon of not having read them; he was in painful

doubt as to what was really thought of them by the leading minds of

Brasenose, and bitterly convinced that his old acquaintance Carp had

been the writer of that depreciatory recension which was kept locked in

a small drawer of Mr. Casaubon's desk, and also in a dark closet of his

verbal memory. These were heavy impressions to struggle against, and

brought that melancholy embitterment which is the consequence of all

excessive claim: even his religious faith wavered with his wavering

trust in his own authorship, and the consolations of the Christian hope

in immortality seemed to lean on the immortality of the still unwritten

Key to all Mythologies. For my part I am very sorry for him. It is an

uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to

enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be

liberated from a small hungry shivering self--never to be fully

possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness

rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardor of a

passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and

uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted. Becoming a

dean or even a bishop would make little difference, I fear, to Mr.

Casaubon's uneasiness. Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that

behind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our

poor little eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or less

under anxious control.




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