 on her way to Rome.
 

                                   Chapter XI

 »But deeds and language such as men do use,
 And persons such as comedy would choose,
 When she would show an image of the times,
 And sport with human follies, not with crimes.«
                                                                     Ben Jonson.
 
Lydgate, in fact, was already conscious of being fascinated by a woman
strikingly different from Miss Brooke: he did not in the least suppose that he
had lost his balance and fallen in love, but he had said of that particular
woman, »She is grace itself; she is perfectly lovely and accomplished. That is
what a woman ought to be: she ought to produce the effect of exquisite music.«
Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced
with philosophy and investigated by science. But Rosamond Vincy seemed to have
the true melodic charm; and when a man has seen the woman whom he would have
chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will
usually depend on her resolution rather than on his. Lydgate believed that he
should not marry for several years: not marry until he had trodden out a good
clear path for himself away from the broad road which was quite ready made. He
had seen Miss Vincy above his horizon almost as long as it had taken Mr.
Casaubon to become engaged and married: but this learned gentleman was possessed
of a fortune; he had assembled his voluminous notes, and had made that sort of
reputation which precedes performance, - often the larger part of a man's fame.
He took a wife, as we have seen, to adorn the remaining quadrant of his course,
and be a little moon that would cause hardly a calculable perturbation. But
Lydgate was young, poor, ambitious. He had his half-century before him instead
of behind him, and he had come to Middlemarch bent on doing many things that
were not directly fitted to make his fortune or even secure him a good income.
To a man under such circumstances, taking a wife is something more than a
question of adornment, however highly he may rate this; and Lydgate was disposed
to give it the first place among wifely functions. To his taste, guided by a
single conversation, here was the point on which Miss Brooke would be found
wanting, notwithstanding her undeniable beauty. She did not look at things from
the proper feminine angle. The society of such women was about as relaxing as
going from your work to teach the second form, instead of reclining in a
paradise with sweet laughs for bird-notes, and blue eyes
