Sublime

He had been led to the murder through his shallow and cowardly nature, exasperated moreover by privation and failure.

functionary

“So probably men led to execution clutch mentally at every object that meets them on the way,”

all is in a man’s hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice,

Mr Farebrother was aware that Lydgate was a proud man, but having very little corresponding fibre in himself, and perhaps too little care about personal dignity, except the dignity of not being mean or foolish, he could hardly allow enough for the way in which Lydgate shrank, as from a burn, from the utterance of any word about his private affairs.