[394] _Rhoda Fleming_, 149. Cf. Victor Radnor, who “intended impressing himself upon the world as a factory of ideas.” Also Sir Willoughby, who can account for Lætitia’s refusal of him only by the reflection,--“There’s a madness comes over women at times, I know.” [395] He also visualizes himself as a Don Juan, Lothario, Lovelace, and thinks, “Why should not he be a curled darling as well as another?” He is consequently hurt and astonished when, after the event, his disarming confession, “I know I’ve behaved badly,” was met by the unsympathetic agreement, “Well, yes, I’m afraid you have.” [396] Cf. the whole _motif_ of Rostand’s _Chanticler_. [397] Sentimentalism is further described as “a happy pastime and an important science to the timid, the idle, and the heartless; but a damning one to them who have anything to forfeit.” _Richard Feverel_, 220. [398] In an access of particularly malicious realism, Meredith calls attention to a region that was already “a trifle prominent in the person of the wise youth, and carried, as it were, the flag of his philosophical tenets in front of him.” He is also described as having “an instinct for the majority, and, as the world invariably found him enlisted in its ranks, his appellation of wise youth was acquiesced in without irony.” Again,--“discreetness, therefore, was instructed to reign at the Abbey. Under Adrian’s able tuition the fairest of its domestics acquired that virtue.” [399] _Ralph the Heir_, 81. He dissects him a little further,--“How far the real philanthropy of the man may have been marred by an uneasy and fatuous ambition; how far he was carried away by a feeling that it was better to make speeches at the Cheshire Cheese than to apply for payment of money due to his father, it would be very hard for us to decide.” [400] _Last Chronicles of Barset_, I, 108. [401] _Ibid._, 449. [402] _The Way We Live Now_, 1–2. In this connection we are also informed that “She did not fall in love, she did not wilfully flirt, she did not commit herself; but she smiled and whispered, and made confidences and looked out of her own eyes into men’s eyes as though there might be some mysterious bond between her and them--if only mysterious circumstances would permit it. But the end of it all was to induce some one to do something which would cause a publisher to give her good payment for indifferent writing, or an editor to be lenient when, upon the merits of the case, he should have been severe.” [403] This proves efficacious, since Mr. Booker, though “an Aristides among reviewers,” cannot resist the bait of a favorable notice of his _Tale_, “even though written by the hand of a female literary charlatan, and he would have no compunction as to repaying the service by fulsome praise in _The Literary Chronicle_.” [404] _Nightmare Abbey_, 78. [405] _What Will He Do with It?_ Preface to Chap. IV, Bk. VI.