Lydgate was not at all sure that the Vicar maligned
himself. A model clergyman, like a model doctor,
ought to think his own profession the finest in the
world, and take all knowledge as mere nourishment
to his moral pathology and therapeutics. He only
said, “What reason does Bulstrode give for superseding
you?”
“That I don’t teach his opinions—which
he calls spiritual religion; and that I have no time
to spare. Both statements are true. But
then I could make time, and I should be glad of the
forty pounds. That is the plain fact of the case.
But let us dismiss it. I only wanted to tell
you that if you vote for your arsenic-man, you are
not to cut me in consequence. I can’t spare
you. You are a sort of circumnavigator come to
settle among us, and will keep up my belief in the
antipodes. Now tell me all about them in Paris.”
“Oh, sir, the loftiest
hopes on earth
Draw lots with meaner
hopes: heroic breasts,
Breathing bad air, ran
risk of pestilence;
Or, lacking lime-juice
when they cross the Line,
May languish with the
scurvy.”
Some weeks passed after this conversation before the
question of the chaplaincy gathered any practical
import for Lydgate, and without telling himself the
reason, he deferred the predetermination on which side
he should give his vote. It would really have
been a matter of total indifference to him—that
is to say, he would have taken the more convenient
side, and given his vote for the appointment of Tyke
without any hesitation—if he had not cared
personally for Mr. Farebrother.
But his liking for the Vicar of St. Botolph’s
grew with growing acquaintanceship. That, entering
into Lydgate’s position as a new-comer who had
his own professional objects to secure, Mr. Farebrother
should have taken pains rather to warn off than to
obtain his interest, showed an unusual delicacy and
generosity, which Lydgate’s nature was keenly
alive to. It went along with other points of
conduct in Mr. Farebrother which were exceptionally
fine, and made his character resemble those southern
landscapes which seem divided between natural grandeur
and social slovenliness. Very few men could
have been as filial and chivalrous as he was to the
mother, aunt, and sister, whose dependence on him
had in many ways shaped his life rather uneasily for
himself; few men who feel the pressure of small needs
are so nobly resolute not to dress up their inevitably
self-interested desires in a pretext of better motives.
In these matters he was conscious that his life would
bear the closest scrutiny; and perhaps the consciousness
encouraged a little defiance towards the critical
strictness of persons whose celestial intimacies seemed
not to improve their domestic manners, and whose lofty
aims were not needed to account for their actions.
Then, his preaching was ingenious and pithy, like
