Mrs. Bulstrode said no more, attributing some dissatisfaction which she

felt to her own want of spirituality. She believed that her husband

was one of those men whose memoirs should be written when they died.

As to Lydgate himself, having been accepted, he was prepared to accept

all the consequences which he believed himself to foresee with perfect

clearness. Of course he must be married in a year--perhaps even in

half a year. This was not what he had intended; but other schemes

would not be hindered: they would simply adjust themselves anew.

Marriage, of course, must be prepared for in the usual way. A house

must be taken instead of the rooms he at present occupied; and Lydgate,

having heard Rosamond speak with admiration of old Mrs. Bretton's house

(situated in Lowick Gate), took notice when it fell vacant after the

old lady's death, and immediately entered into treaty for it.

He did this in an episodic way, very much as he gave orders to his

tailor for every requisite of perfect dress, without any notion of

being extravagant. On the contrary, he would have despised any

ostentation of expense; his profession had familiarized him with all

grades of poverty, and he cared much for those who suffered hardships.

He would have behaved perfectly at a table where the sauce was served

in a jug with the handle off, and he would have remembered nothing

about a grand dinner except that a man was there who talked well. But

it had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what

he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and

excellent waiting at table. In warming himself at French social

theories he had brought away no smell of scorching. We may handle even

extreme opinions with impunity while our furniture, our dinner-giving,

and preference for armorial bearings in our own case, link us

indissolubly with the established order. And Lydgate's tendency was

not towards extreme opinions: he would have liked no barefooted

doctrines, being particular about his boots: he was no radical in

relation to anything but medical reform and the prosecution of

discovery. In the rest of practical life he walked by hereditary

habit; half from that personal pride and unreflecting egoism which I

have already called commonness, and half from that naivete which

belonged to preoccupation with favorite ideas.

Any inward debate Lydgate had as to the consequences of this engagement

which had stolen upon him, turned on the paucity of time rather than of

money. Certainly, being in love and being expected continually by some

one who always turned out to be prettier than memory could represent

her to be, did interfere with the diligent use of spare hours which

might serve some "plodding fellow of a German" to make the great,

imminent discovery. This was really an argument for not deferring the

marriage too long, as he implied to Mr. Farebrother, one day that the

Vicar came to his room with some pond-products which he wanted to

examine under a better microscope than his own, and, finding Lydgate's

tableful of apparatus and specimens in confusion, said sarcastically--




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