e, by which a man swims
and makes his point or else is carried headlong. The risk would remain
even with close knowledge of Lydgate's character; for character too is
a process and an unfolding. The man was still in the making, as much
as the Middlemarch doctor and immortal discoverer, and there were both
virtues and faults capable of shrinking or expanding. The faults will
not, I hope, be a reason for the withdrawal of your interest in him.
Among our valued friends is there not some one or other who is a little
too self-confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little
spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protuberant
there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to
lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient
solicitations? All these things might be alleged against Lydgate, but
then, they are the periphrases of a polite preacher, who talks of Adam,
and would not like to mention anything painful to the pew-renters. The
particular faults from which these delicate generalities are distilled
have distinguishable physiognomies, diction, accent, and grimaces;
filling up parts in very various dramas. Our vanities differ as our
noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in
correspondence with the minutiae of mental make in which one of us
differs from another. Lydgate's conceit was of the arrogant sort,
never simpering, never impertinent, but massive in its claims and
benevolently contemptuous. He would do a great deal for noodles, being
sorry for them, and feeling quite sure that they could have no power
over him: he had thought of joining the Saint Simonians when he was in
Paris, in order to turn them against some of their own doctrines. All
his faults were marked by kindred traits, and were those of a man who
had a fine baritone, whose clothes hung well upon him, and who even in
his ordinary gestures had an air of inbred distinction. Where then lay
the spots of commonness? says a young lady enamoured of that careless
grace. How could there be any commonness in a man so well-bred, so
ambitious of social distinction, so generous and unusual in his views
of social duty? As easily as there may be stupidity in a man of genius
if you take him unawares on the wrong subject, or as many a man who has
the best will to advance the social millennium might be ill-inspired in
imagining its lighter pleasures; unable to go beyond Offenbach's musi