Page:Eliot - Middlemarch, vol. I, 1871.djvu/416

402 to put things strongly; I myself often exaggerate when I speak hastily."

"What was it?" said Will, observing that she spoke with a timidity quite new in her. "I have a hyperbolical tongue: it catches fire as it goes. I daresay I shall have to retract."

"I mean what you said about the necessity of knowing German—I mean, for the subjects that Mr Casaubon is engaged in. I have been thinking about it; and it seems to me that with Mr Casaubon's learning he must have before him the same materials as German scholars—has he not?" Dorothea's timidity was due to an indistinct consciousness that she was in the strange situation of consulting a third person about the adequacy of Mr Casaubon's learning.

"Not exactly the same materials," said Will, thinking that he would be duly reserved. "He is not an Orientalist, you know. He does not profess to have more than second-hand knowledge there."

"But there are very valuable books about antiquities which were written a long while ago by scholars who knew nothing about these modern things; and they are still used. Why should Mr Casaubon's not be valuable, like theirs?" said Dorothea, with more remonstrant energy. She