MIDDLEMARCH (Completed)

Chapter 3

"Say, goddess, what ensued, when Raphael,

The affable archangel . . .

Eve

The story heard attentive, and was filled

With admiration, and deep muse, to hear

Of things so high and strange."

--Paradise Lost, B. vii.

If it had really occurred to Mr. Casaubon to think of Miss

Brooke as a suitable wife for him, the reasons that might induce

her to accept him were already planted in her mind, and by the

evening of the next day the reasons had budded and bloomed.

For they had had a long conversation in the morning, while Celia,

who did not like the company of Mr. Casaubon's moles and sallowness,

had escaped to the vicarage to play with the curate's ill-shod

but merry children.

Dorothea by this time had looked deep into the ungauged reservoir

of Mr. Casaubon's mind, seeing reflected there in vague labyrinthine

extension every quality she herself brought; had opened much of

her own experience to him, and had understood from him the scope

of his great work, also of attractively labyrinthine extent.

For he had been as instructive as Milton's "affable archangel;"

and with something of the archangelic manner he told her how he had

undertaken to show (what indeed had been attempted before, but not

with that thoroughness, justice of comparison, and effectiveness

of arrangement at which Mr. Casaubon aimed) that all the mythical

systems or erratic mythical fragments in the world were corruptions

of a tradition originally revealed. Having once mastered the true

position and taken a firm footing there, the vast field of mythical

constructions became intelligible, nay, luminous with the reflected

light of correspondences. But to gather in this great harvest

of truth was no light or speedy work. His notes already made

a formidable range of volumes, but the crowning task would be to

condense these voluminous still-accumulating results and bring them,

like the earlier vintage of Hippocratic books, to fit a little shelf.

In explaining this to Dorothea, Mr. Casaubon expressed himself nearly

as he would have done to a fellow-student, for he had not two styles

of talking at command: it is true that when he used a Greek or Latin

phrase he always gave the English with scrupulous care, but he would

probably have done this in any case. A learned provincial clergyman

is accustomed to think of his acquaintances as of "lords, knyghtes,