with moderate work, and to seek variety of relaxation. Mr Brooke, who sat by on one occasion, suggested that Mr Casaubon should go fishing, as Cadwallader did, and have a turning-room, make toys, table-legs and that kind of thing.
“In short you recommend me to anticipate the arrival of my second childhood,” said poor Mr Casaubon, with some bitterness. “These things,” he added, looking at Lydgate, “would be to me such relaxation as tow-picking is to prisoners in a house of correction.”
“I confess,” said Lydgate, smiling, “amusement is rather an unsatisfactory prescription. It is something like telling people to keep up their spirits. Perhaps I had better say, that you must submit to be mildly bored rather than to go on working.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mr Brooke. “Get Dorothea to play backgammon with you in the evenings. And shuttlecock, now—I don’t know a finer game than shuttlecock for the daytime. I remember it all the fashion. To be sure, your eyes might not stand that, Casaubon. But you must unbend, you know. Why, you might take to some light study: conchology, now: I always think that must be a light study. Or get Dorothea to read you light things, Smollett—‘Roderick Random,’ ‘Humphrey Clinker:’ they are a little broad, but she may read anything now she’s married, you know. I remember they made me laugh uncommonly—there’s a droll bit about a postilion’s breeches. We have no such humour now. I have gone through all these things, but they might be rather new to you.”
“As new as eating thistles,” would have been an answer to represent Mr Casaubon’s feelings. But he only bowed resignedly, with due respect to his wife’s uncle, and observed that doubtless the works he mentioned had “served as a resource to a certain order of minds.”
“You see,” said the able magistrate to Lydgate, when they were outside the door, “Casaubon has been a little narrow: it leaves him rather at a loss when you forbid him his particular work, which I believe is something very deep indeed—in the line of research, you know. I would never give way to that; I was always versatile. But a clergyman is tied a little tight. If they would make him a bishop, now!—he did a very good pamphlet for Peel. He would have more movement then, more show; he might get a little flesh. But I recommend you to talk to Mrs Casaubon. She is clever enough for anything, is my niece. Tell her, her husband wants liveliness, diversion: put her on amusing tactics.”
Without Mr Brooke’s advice, Lydgate had determined on speaking to Dorothea. She had not been present while her uncle was throwing out his pleasant suggestions as to the mode in which life at Lowick might be enlivened, but she was usually by her husband’s side, and the unaffected signs of intense anxiety in her face and voice about whatever touched his mind or health, made a drama which Lydgate was inclined to watch. He said to himself that he was only doing right in telling her the truth about her husband’s probable future, but he certainly thought also that it would be interesting to
