MIDDLEMARCH (Completed)

Chapter 10

"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.