"That is fine, Ladislaw: that is the way to put it. Write that down,
now. We must begin to get documents about the feeling of the country,
as well as the machine-breaking and general distress."
"As to documents," said Will, "a two-inch card will hold plenty. A few
rows of figures are enough to deduce misery from, and a few more will
show the rate at which the political determination of the people is
growing."
"Good: draw that out a little more at length, Ladislaw. That is an
idea, now: write it out in the 'Pioneer.' Put the figures and deduce
the misery, you know; and put the other figures and deduce--and so on.
You have a way of putting things. Burke, now:--when I think of Burke,
I can't help wishing somebody had a pocket-borough to give you,
Ladislaw. You'd never get elected, you know. And we shall always want
talent in the House: reform as we will, we shall always want talent.
That avalanche and the thunder, now, was really a little like Burke. I
want that sort of thing--not ideas, you know, but a way of putting
them."
"Pocket-boroughs would be a fine thing," said Ladislaw, "if they were
always in the right pocket, and there were always a Burke at hand."
Will was not displeased with that complimentary comparison, even from
Mr. Brooke; for it is a little too trying to human flesh to be
conscious of expressing one's self better than others and never to have
it noticed, and in the general dearth of admiration for the right
thing, even a chance bray of applause falling exactly in time is rather
fortifying. Will felt that his literary refinements were usually
beyond the limits of Middlemarch perception; nevertheless, he was
beginning thoroughly to like the work of which when he began he had
said to himself rather languidly, "Why not?"--and he studied the
political situation with as ardent an interest as he had ever given to
poetic metres or mediaevalism. It is undeniable that but for the
desire to be where Dorothea was, and perhaps the want of knowing what
else to do, Will would not at this time have been meditating on the
needs of the English people or criticising English statesmanship: he
would probably have been rambling in Italy sketching plans for several
dramas, trying prose and finding it too jejune, trying verse and
finding it too artificial, beginning to copy "bits" from old pictures,
leaving off because they were "no good," and observing that, after all,
self-culture was the principal point; while in politics he would have
been sympathizing warmly with liberty and progress in general. Our
sense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take the place
of dilettanteism and make us feel that the quality of our action is not
a matter of indifference.