Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/72

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Colonel Newcome our sense of his intellectual infirmity and imperfection is never quite overcome or transfigured by our sense of his moral and chivalrous excellence; if indeed it will ever quite allow us to shake or drive off the lurking or recurring impression that in the author's mind the very idea of goodness was inseparably inwoven and inwound with the thought of some qualifying deformity or characteristic debility, of something in the very essence of its composition inferior and infirm; some weakness or malformation of mind, some sprawling or splay-footed imbecility corresponding to the physical disfigurement of Major Dobbin. One reason or explanation not visibly inapt or inadequate to account for this ungracious impression and the inevitable discomfort or