 young lady - the younger the
better, because more educable and submissive - of a rank equal to his own, of
religious principles, virtuous disposition, and good understanding. On such a
young lady he would make handsome settlements, and he would neglect no
arrangement for her happiness: in return, he should receive family pleasures and
leave behind hind him that copy of himself which seemed so urgently required of
a man - to the sonneteers of the sixteenth century. Times had altered since
then, and no sonneteer had insisted on Mr. Casaubon's leaving a copy of himself;
moreover, he had not yet succeeded in issuing copies of his mythological key;
but he had always intended to acquit himself by marriage, and the sense that he
was fast leaving the years behind him, that the world was getting dimmer and
that he felt lonely, was a reason to him for losing no more time in overtaking
domestic delights before they too were left behind by the years.
    And when he had seen Dorothea he believed that he had found even more than
he demanded: she might really be such a helpmate to him as would enable him to
dispense with a hired secretary, an aid which Mr. Casaubon had never yet
employed and had a suspicious dread of. (Mr. Casaubon was nervously conscious
that he was expected to manifest a powerful mind.) Providence, in its kindness,
had supplied him with the wife he needed. A wife, a modest young lady, with the
purely appreciative, unambitious abilities of her sex, is sure to think her
husband's mind powerful. Whether Providence had taken equal care of Miss Brooke
in presenting her with Mr. Casaubon was an idea which could hardly occur to him.
Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about
his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for
making himself happy. As if a man could choose not only his wife but his wife's
husband! Or as if he were bound to provide charms for his posterity in his own
person! - When Dorothea accepted him with effusion, that was only natural; and
Mr. Casaubon believed that his happiness was going to begin.
    He had not had much foretaste of happiness in his previous life. To know
intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.
Mr. Casaubon had never had a strong bodily frame, and his soul was sensitive
without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out of
self-consciousness into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy
ground where it was hatched
