"Having said it, he was screwed up to feel it as nearly as possible, such virtue is there in uttered words."
Edward Blancove is visited by the facile compunction
that attacks Arthur Donnithorne and others of the kind:[1]
"He closed, as it were, a black volume, and opened a new and
bright one. Young men easily fancy that they may do this, and
that when the black volume is shut the tide is stopped. Saying 'I
was a fool,' they believe they have put an end to the foolishness."
Outside of Eliot and Meredith, the best examples of the
youthful sentimental egoist are Thackeray's George Osborne,
and Trollope's Crosbie. The latter argues himself
into a state of innocence over his desertion of Lily Dale
by soliloquizing that he did not deserve her, could not
make her happy, and was bound to tell the truth, which,
however painful, was always best.[2]
A word might be vouchsafed for this trait in low life, usually brushed lightly by the novelist. Dale of Allington is a great man in the market town, "laying down the law as to barley and oxen among men who usually knew more about barley and oxen than he did." Squire Cass, a person of some importance, "had a tenant or two, who complained of the game to him quite as if he had been a lord." Craig looks to Mrs. Poyser "like a cock as thinks the sun's rose o' purpose to hear him crow."[3] And Robert
- ↑ Rhoda Fleming, 149. Cf. Victor Radnor, who "intended impressing himself upon the world as a factory of ideas." Also Sir Willoughby, who can account for Lætitia's refusal of him only by the reflection,—"There's a madness comes over women at times, I know."
- ↑ He also visualizes himself as a Don Juan, Lothario, Lovelace, and thinks, "Why should not he be a curled darling as well as another?" He is consequently hurt and astonished when, after the event, his disarming confession, "I know I've behaved badly," was met by the unsympathetic agreement, "Well, yes, I'm afraid you have."
- ↑ Cf. the whole motif of Rostand's Chanticler.
