but he had plenty of confidence in his resolution to
avoid it as far as possible: being seven-and-twenty, he felt himself
experienced. And he was not going to have his vanities provoked by contact with
the showy worldly successes of the capital, but to live among people who could
hold no rivalry with that pursuit of a great idea which was to be a twin object
with the assiduous practice of his profession. There was fascination in the hope
that the two purposes would illuminate each other: the careful observation and
inference which was his daily work, the use of the lens to further his judgment
in special cases, would further his thought as an instrument of larger inquiry.
Was not this the typical pre-eminence of his profession? He would be a good
Middlemarch doctor, and by that very means keep himself in the track of
far-reaching investigation. On one point he may fairly claim approval at this
particular stage of his career: he did not mean to imitate those philanthropic
models who make a profit out of poisonous pickles to support themselves while
they are exposing adulteration, or hold shares in a gambling-hell that they may
have leisure to represent the cause of public morality. He intended to begin in
his own case some particular reforms which were quite certainly within his
reach, and much less of a problem than the demonstrating of an anatomical
conception. One of these reforms was to act stoutly on the strength of a recent
legal decision, and simply prescribe, without dispensing drugs or taking
percentage from druggists. This was an innovation for one who had chosen to
adopt the style of general practitioner in a country town, and would be felt as
offensive criticism by his professional brethren. But Lydgate meant to innovate
in his treatment also, and he was wise enough to see that the best security for
his practising honestly according to his belief was to get rid of systematic
temptations to the contrary.
    Perhaps that was a more cheerful time for observers and theorisers than the
present; we are apt to think it the finest era of the world when America was
beginning to be discovered, when a bold sailor, even if he were wrecked, might
alight on a new kingdom; and about 1829 the dark territories of Pathology were a
fine America for a spirited young adventurer. Lydgate was ambitious above all to
contribute towards enlarging the scientific, rational basis of his profession.
The more he became interested in special questions of disease, such as the
nature of fever or fevers, the more keenly he felt the need for that fundamental
knowledge of structure which just at the beginning of the century had been
illuminated