Spurning at the High: a poet of Chartism
Edward Pearce, 6 November 2003
Will became an ardent public man, working well in those times when reforms were begun with a young hopefulness of immediate good which has been much checked in our days, and getting at last returned to Parliament by a constituency who paid his expenses.
Middlemarch
The ‘hopefulness’ being ‘much checked in our days’ speaks the caution of 1867 as against the enthusiasm...