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"How much, methinks, I could despise this ainst it!

--SHAKESPEARE: Henry VIII

One of the professional calls -journey was to Lowick Manor, in consequence of a

letter which had requested him to fix a time for his visit

Mr Casaubon had never put any question concerning the nature of his

illness to Lydgate, nor had he even to Dorothea betrayed any anxiety as

to how far it ht be likely to cut short his labors or his life On

this point, as on all others, he shrank fro in his lot sur, the idea of calling forth a show of co an alarm or a sorroas necessarily intolerable

to hi of this experience, and

perhaps it is only to be overcoh

to make all efforts at isolation see

But Mr Casaubon was now brooding over soh which the

question of his health and life haunted his silence with a h the autumnal unripeness of his

authorship It is true that this last ht be called his central

ambition; but there are soest result is the uneasy susceptibility accumulated in the

consciousness of the author--one knows of the river by a few streaks

aathered deposit of uncomfortable mud That was the way

with Mr Casaubon's hard intellectual labors Their ies," but a

ive him the place which he

had not demonstrably merited--a perpetual suspicious conjecture that

the views entertained of hie--a melancholy