When the bitter end comes, you cannot sneer as Lydgate
does--you can hardly keep back the tears. And what is it all about? It
simply comes to this, that a good strong man falls into the bad company
of a number of fairly good but dull people, and the result is a tragedy.
Rosamund Vincy is a pattern of propriety; Mrs. Vincy is a fat, kindly
soul; Mr. Vincy is a blustering good-natured middle-class man. There is
no particular harm among the whole set, yet they contrive to ruin a
great man; they lower him from a great career, and convert him into a
mere prosperous gout-doctor. Every high aspiration of the man dies away.
His wife is essentially a commonplace pretty being, and she cannot
understand the great heart and brain that are sacrificed to her; so the
genius is forced to break his heart about furniture and carpets and
respectability, while the prim pretty young woman who causes the ghastly
death of a soul goes on fancying herself a model of good sense and
virtue and all the rest. "Of course I should like you to make
discoveries," she says; but she only shudders at the microscopic work.
When the financial catastrophe comes, she has the great soul at her
mercy, and she stabs him--stabs him through and through--while he is too
noble and tender to make reply.
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