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CHAPTER LXIV . 1st Gent . Where lies the power , there let the blame lie too . 2d Gent . Nay , power is relative ; you cannot fright The coming pest with border fortresses , Or catch your carp with subtle argument . All force is twain in one : cause is not cause Unless effect be there ; and action’s self Must needs contain a passive . So command Exists but with obedience . Even if Lydgate had been inclined to be quite open about his affairs , he knew that it would have hardly been in Mr . Farebrother’s power to give him the help he immediately wanted . With the year’s bills coming in from his tradesmen , with Dover’s threatening hold on his furniture , and with nothing to depend on but slow dribbling payments from patients who must not be offended — for the handsome fees he had had from Freshitt Hall and Lowick Manor had been easily absorbed — nothing less than a thousand pounds would have freed him from actual embarrassment , and left a residue which , according to the favorite phrase of hopefulness in such circumstances , would have given him “ time to look about him . ” Naturally , the merry Christmas bringing the happy New Year , when fellow - citizens expect to be paid for the trouble and goods they have smilingly bestowed on their neighbors , had so tightened the pressure of sordid cares on Lydgate’s mind that it was hardly possible for him to think unbrokenly of any other subject , even the most habitual and soliciting . He was not an ill - tempered man ; his intellectual activity , the ardent kindness of his heart , as well as his strong frame , would always , under tolerably easy conditions , have kept him above the petty uncontrolled susceptibilities which make bad temper . But he was now a prey to that worst irritation which arises not simply from annoyances , but from the second consciousness underlying those annoyances , of wasted energy and a degrading preoccupation , which was the reverse of all his former purposes . “ This is what I am thinking of ; and that is what I might have been thinking of , ” was the bitter incessant murmur within him , making every difficulty a double goad to impatience . Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake ; but the sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have its consolations . Lydgate’s discontent was much harder to bear : it was the sense that there was a grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him , while his self was being narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic fears , and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such fears .
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