Middlemarch

The Necessity of Knowing German

Dorothea, timidly and with a sense of impropriety, returns to something Will had said about the necessity of knowing German for the subjects Mr. Casaubon pursues.

Mr. Casaubon’s Adequacy

Dorothea presses Will on whether Mr. Casaubon’s learning really gives him the same materials as German scholars, impelled to argue aloud a question she has been privately turning over.

The Lumber-Room of Broken Theories

Will scoffs that Mr. Casaubon’s chosen subject changes like chemistry and that emulating last-century scholars is “living in a lumber-room and furbishing up broken-legged theories about Chus and Mizraim.”

Failure After Long Perseverance

Horrified at having reached such a supposition, Dorothea withdraws with the noble reflection that “Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.”

Will’s Resolve to Work His Own Way

Will announces he will renounce the dangerous liberty of Mr. Casaubon’s generosity, go back to England shortly, and “work my own way—depend on nobody else than myself,” a resolve Dorothea warmly respects.

You Are a Poem

After Will describes the ideal poet, Dorothea protests that he has left out the poems themselves, and Will answers that “You are a poem—and that is to be the best part of a poet—what makes up the poet’s consciousness in his best moods.”

A Poet’s Consciousness

Will defines the poet as one whose soul is so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel that “knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.”

The Promise of Silence

Moved by an “recurring impulse,” Dorothea extracts from Will a promise that he will never again speak to anyone about Mr. Casaubon’s writings in the way he just has.

A Duty Towards Him

That evening Dorothea tells Mr. Casaubon of Will’s resolve, asserting that he had only considered Will’s welfare; Mr. Casaubon replies that “I had a duty towards him,” though he regards Will as “not otherwise an object of interest” and refuses to discuss his future further.

LIVRE III.

Book III continues the overarching narrative, setting the stage for themes of mortality and anticipation.

Waiting for Death

The section “Waiting for Death” explores the protagonist’s contemplation and emotional state as they confront the inevitability of death.

CHAPITRE XXIII.

Fred Vincy’s debt of one hundred and sixty pounds to the horse-dealer Bambridge, accumulated through hiring horses, ruining a fine hunter, and billiards losses during his vacations, hangs over him despite the buoyant hopefulness with which he has always assumed it would be met. After initially giving his own signed bill and then renewing it with Caleb Garth’s signature—obtained after a process in which Caleb listened, examined his pen, and delivered a mild admonition about breaking the horse’s knees—Fred finds himself short of funds when his uncle Featherstone’s present still leaves a deficit and his father’s anger over both his failed examination and the Bulstrode certificate borrowing makes home an impossible recourse. He therefore deposits eighty pounds with his mother, keeps twenty as gambling “seed-corn” in hopes of multiplying it, and finally resolves to sell his horse at the Houndsley horse-fair, riding out from Middlemarch in the company of Bambridge and Horrock under what the narrator wryly calls the sustaining power of nomenclature, by which their monotonous errand is dignified as “pleasure.”

Fred Vincy’s Debt

Fred Vincy carries a debt of one hundred and sixty pounds owed to Mr. Bambridge, a horse-dealing neighbor whose company is sought by young men known for their love of pleasure. The debt accumulated through Fred’s vacation amusements: hiring horses, ruining a fine hunter, and small advances to cover billiards losses. Though buoyant by nature, Fred finds the circumstances of this particular debt unusually pressing because Bambridge required security for the loan.

The Bill Renewed with Caleb Garth

Fred initially gave Bambridge a bill bearing his own signature. Three months later, he renewed this bill with the signature of Caleb Garth. On both occasions Fred felt confident he could meet the obligation himself, drawing on the ample resources of his hopefulness rather than any external facts. His confidence was sustained by an inventory of unlikely prospects: a present from his uncle, a run of luck at cards, or a profitable horse swap. Even in worst-case scenarios, Fred counted his father’s pocket as an inexhaustible last resort.