"He had catched a great cold, had he had no other clothes

to wear than the skin of a bear not yet killed."--FULLER.

Young Ladislaw did not pay that visit to which Mr. Brooke had invited

him, and only six days afterwards Mr. Casaubon mentioned that his young

relative had started for the Continent, seeming by this cold vagueness

to waive inquiry. Indeed, Will had declined to fix on any more precise

destination than the entire area of Europe. Genius, he held, is

necessarily intolerant of fetters: on the one hand it must have the

utmost play for its spontaneity; on the other, it may confidently await

those messages from the universe which summon it to its peculiar work,

only placing itself in an attitude of receptivity towards all sublime

chances. The attitudes of receptivity are various, and Will had

sincerely tried many of them. He was not excessively fond of wine, but

he had several times taken too much, simply as an experiment in that

form of ecstasy; he had fasted till he was faint, and then supped on

lobster; he had made himself ill with doses of opium. Nothing greatly

original had resulted from these measures; and the effects of the opium

had convinced him that there was an entire dissimilarity between his

constitution and De Quincey's. The superadded circumstance which would

evolve the genius had not yet come; the universe had not yet beckoned.

Even Caesar's fortune at one time was, but a grand presentiment. We

know what a masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes

may be disguised in helpless embryos.--In fact, the world is full of

hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities. Will

saw clearly enough the pitiable instances of long incubation producing

no chick, and but for gratitude would have laughed at Casaubon, whose

plodding application, rows of note-books, and small taper of learned

theory exploring the tossed ruins of the world, seemed to enforce a

moral entirely encouraging to Will's generous reliance on the

intentions of the universe with regard to himself. He held that

reliance to be a mark of genius; and certainly it is no mark to the

contrary; genius consisting neither in self-conceit nor in humility,

but in a power to make or do, not anything in general, but something in

particular. Let him start for the Continent, then, without our

pronouncing on his future. Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the

most gratuitous.

But at present this caution against a too hasty judgment interests me

more in relation to Mr. Casaubon than to his young cousin. If to

Dorothea Mr. Casaubon had been the mere occasion which had set alight

the fine inflammable material of her youthful illusions, does it follow

that he was fairly represented in the minds of those less impassioned

personages who have hitherto delivered their judgments concerning him?

I protest against any absolute conclusion, any prejudice derived from

Mrs. Cadwallader's contempt for a neighboring clergyman's alleged

greatness of soul, or Sir James Chettam's poor opinion of his rival's

legs,--from Mr. Brooke's failure to elicit a companion's ideas, or from

Celia's criticism of a middle-aged scholar's personal appearance. I am

not sure that the greatest man of his age, if ever that solitary

superlative existed, could escape these unfavorable reflections of

himself in various small mirrors; and even Milton, looking for his

portrait in a spoon, must submit to have the facial angle of a bumpkin.

Moreover, if Mr. Casaubon, speaking for himself, has rather a chilling

rhetoric, it is not therefore certain that there is no good work or

fine feeling in him. Did not an immortal physicist and interpreter of

hieroglyphs write detestable verses? Has the theory of the solar

system been advanced by graceful manners and conversational tact?

Suppose we turn from outside estimates of a man, to wonder, with keener

interest, what is the report of his own consciousness about his doings

or capacity: with what hindrances he is carrying on his daily labors;

what fading of hopes, or what deeper fixity of self-delusion the years

are marking off within him; and with what spirit he wrestles against

universal pressure, which will one day be too heavy for him, and bring

his heart to its final pause. Doubtless his lot is important in his

own eyes; and the chief reason that we think he asks too large a place

in our consideration must be our want of room for him, since we refer

him to the Divine regard with perfect confidence; nay, it is even held

sublime for our neighbor to expect the utmost there, however little he

may have got from us. Mr. Casaubon, too, was the centre of his own

world; if he was liable to think that others were providentially made

for him, and especially to consider them in the light of their fitness

for the author of a "Key to all Mythologies," this trait is not quite

alien to us, and, like the other mendicant hopes of mortals, claims

some of our pity.




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