destined to proceed further in that marvellous activity. Meanwhile he
occupied himself in miscellaneous periodical writing and in a
multifarious study of moral and physical science. What chiefly attracted
him in all subjects were the vexed questions which have the advantage of
not admitting the decisive proof or disproof that renders many ingenious
arguments superannuated. Not that Merman had a wrangling disposition: he
put all his doubts, queries, and paradoxes deferentially, contended
without unpleasant heat and only with a sonorous eagerness against the
personality of Homer, expressed himself civilly though firmly on the
origin of language, and had tact enough to drop at the right moment such
subjects as the ultimate reduction of all the so-called elementary
substances, his own total scepticism concerning Manetho's chronology, or
even the relation between the magnetic condition of the earth and the
outbreak of revolutionary tendencies. Such flexibility was naturally
much helped by his amiable feeling towards woman, whose nervous system,
he was convinced, would not bear the continuous strain of difficult
topics; and also by his willingness to contribute a song whenever the
same desultory charmer proposed music. Indeed his tastes were domestic
enough to beguile him into marriage when his resources were still very
moderate and partly uncertain. His friends wished that so ingenious and
agreeable a fellow might have more prosperity than they ventured to hope
for him, their chief regret on his account being that he did not
concentrate his talent and leave off forming opinions on at least
half-a-dozen of the subjects over which he scattered his attention,
especially now that he had married a "nice little woman" (the generic
name for acquaintances' wives when they are not markedly disagreeable).
He could not, they observed, want all his various knowledge and Laputan
ideas for his periodical writing which brought him most of his bread,
and he would do well to use his talents in getting a speciality that
would fit him for a post. Perhaps these well-disposed persons were a