Manfred's discontent with heaven and the government of Providence pleased John. Manfred's denunciations of men were really levelled at society, though society as we now understand it, had not then been discovered. Rousseau, Byron and the rest were by no means discontented misogynists. It was only primitive Christianity which demanded that men should love men. To say that one was interested in them would be more modest and truthful. One who has been overreached and thrust aside in the battle of life may well fear men, but one cannot hate them when one realises one's solidarity with humanity and that human intercourse is the greatest pleasure in life. Byron was a spirit who awoke before the others and might have been expected to hate his contemporaries, but none the less strove and suffered for the good of all.
When John saw that the poem was written in blank verse he tried to translate it, but had not got far, before he discovered that he could not write verse. He was not "called." Sometimes melancholy, sometimes frisky, John felt at times an uncontrollable desire to quench the burning fire of thought in intoxication and bring the working of his brain to a standstill. Though he was shy, he felt occasionally impelled to step forward, to make himself impressive, to collect hearers and appear on a stage. When he had drunk a good deal, he wanted to declaim poetry in the grand style. But in the middle of the piece, when his ecstasy was at its highest, he heard his own voice, became nervous and embarrassed, found himself ridiculous, suddenly dropped into a prosaic and comic tone and ended with a grimace; he could be pathetic, but only for a while; then came self-criticism and he laughed at his own overwrought feelings. The romantic was in his blood, but the realistic side of him was about to wake up.
He was also liable to attacks of caprice and self-punishment. Thus he remained away from a dinner to which he had been invited and lay in his room hungry till the evening. He excused himself by saying that he had overslept.
The summer approached its end and he looked forward to the beginning of the autumn term in the elementary school with dread. He had now been in circles where poverty never showed its emaciated face; he had tasted the enticing wine of culture and did not wish to become sober again.
His depression increased; he retired into himself and withdrew from the circle of his friends. But one evening, there was a knock at his door; the old doctor who had been his most intimate friend and lived in the same villa, stepped in.
"How are the moods?" he asked, and sat down with the air of an old fatherly friend.
John did not wish to confess. How was he to say that he was discontented with his position, and acknowledge that he was ambitious and wished to advance in life? But the doctor had seen and understood all. "You must be a doctor," he said. "That is a practical vocation which will suit you, and bring you into touch with real life. You have a lively imagination which you must hold in check, or it will do harm. Now are you inclined to this? Have I guessed right?"
He had. Through his intercourse from afar with these new prophets who succeeded the priests and confessors, John had come to see in their practical knowledge of men's lives, the highest pitch of human wisdom. To become a wise man who could solve the riddles of life,—that was for a while his dream. For a while, for he did not really wish to enter any career in which he could be enrolled as a regular member of society. It was not from dislike of work, for he worked strenuously and was unhappy when unoccupied, but he had a strong objection to be enrolled. He did not wish to be a cypher, a cog-wheel, or a screw in the social machine. He wished to stand outside and contemplate, learn and preach. A doctor was in a certain sense free; he was not an official, had no superiors, set in no public office, was not tied by the clock. That was a fairly enticing prospect, and John was enticed. But how was he to take a medical degree, which required eight years' study? His friend, however, had seen a way out of this difficulty. "Live with us and teach my boys," he said.
This was certainly a business-like offer which carried with it no sense of accepting a humiliating favour. But what about his place in the school? Should he give it up?
"That is not your place!" the doctor cut him short. "Every one should work where his talents can have free scope, and yours cannot in the elementary school, where you have to teach, as prescribed by the school authorities."