Sublime

In Verna’s opinion, Douglas was a born student. He hadn’t finished college because of some highly exaggerated incident in the locker-room of the gym, but he had continued studying on his own and had already covered ceramics, modern poetry, the French impressionists, the growing of avocados, and the clarinet.

‘In point of fact,’ resumed Sir James, not choosing to dwell on ‘fits’, ‘Brooke doesn’t mean badly by his tenants or any one else, but he has got that way of paring and clipping at expenses.’

The strain of brilliance, idealism and arrogance had surfaced in a daughter, Lady Bountiful, and had been passed on through her—undiluted, strong but somewhat formless—to her son Robert.

‘It began with L; it was almost all I’s, I fancy,’ he went on, with a sense that he was getting hold of the slippery name. But the hold was too slight, and he soon got tired of this mental chase; for few men were more impatient of private occupation or more in need of making themselves continually heard than Mr Raffles. He preferred using his time

“Despite his flaws, one has to admit that he is a whale-sized catch.” “I’ll be thrilled when someone harpoons him,” Lillian muttered, making the other two laugh.

Such was Lydgate’s plan of his future: to do good small work for Middlemarch, and great work for the world. He was certainly a happy fellow at this time: to be seven-and-twenty, without any fixed vices, with a generous resolution that his action should be beneficent, and with ideas in his brain that made life interesting quite apart from the cultus

Besides, he was a likeable man: sweet-tempered, ready-witted, frank, without grins of suppressed bitterness or other conversational flavours which make half of us an affliction to our friends.