, thinking of its wings and never flying. His
experience was of that pitiable kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of
all that it should be known: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness which has
not mass enough to spare for transformation into sympathy, and quivers
thread-like in small currents of self-preoccupation or at best of an egoistic
scrupulosity. And Mr. Casaubon had many scruples: he was capable of a severe
self-restraint; he was resolute in being a man of honour according to the code;
he would be unimpeachable by any recognised opinion. In conduct these ends had
been attained; but the difficulty of making his Key to all Mythologies
unimpeachable weighed like lead upon his mind; and the pamphlets - or »Parerga«
as he called them - by which he tested his public and deposited small monumental
records of his march, were far from having been seen in all their significance.
He suspected the Archdeacon of not having read them; he was in painful doubt as
to what was really thought of them by the leading minds of Brasenose, and
bitterly convinced that his old acquaintance Carp had been the writer of that
depreciatory recension which was kept locked in a small drawer of Mr. Casaubon's
desk, and also in a dark closet of his verbal memory. These were heavy
impressions to struggle against, and brought that melancholy embitterment which
is the consequence of all excessive claim: even his religious faith wavered with
his wavering trust in his own authorship, and the consolations of the Christian
hope in immortality seemed to lean on the immortality of the still unwritten Key
to all Mythologies. For my part I am very sorry for him. It is an uneasy lot at
best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at
this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry
shivering self - never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to
have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought,
the ardour of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and
uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dimsighted. Becoming a dean or
even a bishop would make little difference, I fear, to Mr. Casaubon's
uneasiness. Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that behind the big mask
and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our poor little eyes peeping as
usual and our timorous lips more or less under anxious control.
    To this mental estate mapped out a quarter of a century before, to
sensibilities thus fenced in, Mr. Casaubon had thought
