Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life; The Original & Unabridged 1871–1872 Complete Collection! (Annotated)

It was said of him, that Lydgate could do anything he liked, but he had certainly not yet liked to do anything remarkable. He was

it had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid. His

But any one watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots, sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on another, which tells like a calculated irony on the indifference or the frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced neighbor.