“We shall see,” was all the argument left to Dr. Clifford, and other unbelievers.

So far certainly the experiment had succeeded.  A comelier, bracer, better boy was nowhere to be met.  His promise was undeniable.  The vessel, too, though it lay now in harbour and had not yet been proved by the buffets of the elements on the great ocean, had made a good trial trip, and got well through stormy weather, as the records of the Bakewell Comedy witnessed to at Raynham.  No augury could be hopefuller.  The Fates must indeed be hard, the Ordeal severe, the Destiny dark, that could destroy so bright a Spring!  But, bright as it was, the baronet relaxed nothing of his vigilant supervision.  He said to his intimates:  “Every act, every fostered inclination, almost every thought, in this Blossoming Season, bears its seed for the Future.  The living Tree now requires incessant watchfulness.”  And, acting up to his light, Sir Austin did watch.  The youth submitted to an examination every night before he sought his bed; professedly to give an account of his studies, but really to recapitulate his moral experiences of the day.  He could do so, for he was pure.  Any wildness in him that his father noted, any remoteness or richness of fancy in his expressions, was set down as incidental to the Blossoming Season.  There is nothing like a theory for binding the wise.  Sir Austin, despite his rigid watch and ward, knew less of his son than the servant of his household.  And he was deaf, as well as blind.  Adrian thought it his duty to tell him that the youth was consuming paper.  Lady Blandish likewise hinted at his mooning propensities.  Sir Austin from his lofty watch-tower of the System had foreseen it, he said.  But when he came to hear that the youth was writing poetry, his wounded heart had its reasons for being much disturbed.

“Surely,” said Lady Blandish, “you knew he scribbled?”

“A very different thing from writing poetry,” said the baronet.  “No Feverel has ever written poetry.”

“I don’t think it’s a sign of degeneracy,” the lady remarked.  “He rhymes very prettily to me.”

A London phrenologist, and a friendly Oxford Professor of poetry, quieted Sir Austin’s fears.

The phrenologist said he was totally deficient in the imitative faculty; and the Professor, that he was equally so in the rhythmic, and instanced several consoling false quantities in the few effusions submitted to him.  Added to this, Sir Austin told Lady Blandish that Richard had, at his best, done what no poet had ever been known to be capable of doing:  he had, with his own hands, and in cold blood, committed his virgin manuscript to the flames:  which made Lady Blandish sigh forth, “Poor boy!”