Пропустити текст статті
CHAPTER XLV . It is the humor of many heads to extol the days of their forefathers , and declaim against the wickedness of times present . Which notwithstanding they cannot handsomely do , without the borrowed help and satire of times past ; condemning the vices of their own times , by the expressions of vices in times which they commend , which cannot but argue the community of vice in both . Horace , therefore , Juvenal , and Persius , were no prophets , although their lines did seem to indigitate and point at our times . — SIR THOMAS BROWNE : Pseudodoxia Epidemica . That opposition to the New Fever Hospital which Lydgate had sketched to Dorothea was , like other oppositions , to be viewed in many different lights . He regarded it as a mixture of jealousy and dunderheaded prejudice . Mr . Bulstrode saw in it not only medical jealousy but a determination to thwart himself , prompted mainly by a hatred of that vital religion of which he had striven to be an effectual lay representative — a hatred which certainly found pretexts apart from religion such as were only too easy to find in the entanglements of human action . These might be called the ministerial views . But oppositions have the illimitable range of objections at command , which need never stop short at the boundary of knowledge , but can draw forever on the vasts of ignorance . What the opposition in Middlemarch said about the New Hospital and its administration had certainly a great deal of echo in it , for heaven has taken care that everybody shall not be an originator ; but there were differences which represented every social shade between the polished moderation of Dr . Minchin and the trenchant assertion of Mrs . Dollop , the landlady of the Tankard in Slaughter Lane . Mrs . Dollop became more and more convinced by her own asseveration , that Dr . Lydgate meant to let the people die in the Hospital , if not to poison them , for the sake of cutting them up without saying by your leave or with your leave ; for it was a known “ fac ” that he had wanted to cut up Mrs . Goby , as respectable a woman as any in Parley Street , who had money in trust before her marriage — a poor tale for a doctor , who if he was good for anything should know what was the matter with you before you died , and not want to pry into your inside after you were gone . If that was not reason , Mrs . Dollop wished to know what was ; but there was a prevalent feeling in her audience that her opinion was a bulwark , and that if it were overthrown there would be no limits to the cutting - up of bodies , as had been well seen in Burke and Hare with their pitch - plaisters — such a hanging business as that was not wanted in Middlemarch !
Назад Сторінка 332 з 637 Сторінка 332 з 637 Вперед Читайте далі з перекладом Створіть безкоштовний акаунт: 7 днів Pro, далі 20 перекладів слів на день або платний тариф.
