Marriage, like religion and erudition, nay, like authorship itself,
was fated to become an outward requirement, and Edward Casaubon
was bent on fulfilling unimpeachably all requirements. Even drawing
Dorothea into use in his study, according to his own intention
before marriage, was an effort which he was always tempted to defer,
and but for her pleading insistence it might never have begun.
But she had succeeded in making it a matter of course that she should
take her place at an early hour in the library and have work either
of reading aloud or copying assigned her. The work had been easier
to define because Mr. Casaubon had adopted an immediate intention:
there was to be a new Parergon, a small monograph on some
lately traced indications concerning the Egyptian mysteries
whereby certain assertions of Warburton's could be corrected.
References were extensive even here, but not altogether shoreless;
and sentences were actually to be written in the shape wherein they
would be scanned by Brasenose and a less formidable posterity.
These minor monumental productions were always exciting to Mr. Casaubon;
digestion was made difficult by the interference of citations,
or by the rivalry of dialectical phrases ringing against each other
in his brain. And from the first there was to be a Latin dedication
about which everything was uncertain except that it was not to be
addressed to Carp: it was a poisonous regret to Mr.
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