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The past centres about him and his great achievement, and the whole of life is seen in the light of it. In his retreat in the Home, and in his wandering from one Home to another, he ruminates on it, he talks of it; he separates himself from the rest of mankind by a broad distinction, and his point of view of life becomes as original as it is interesting.
When Esmond ruminates and reflects, his manner is the expression of a human being there present, to whom it can be referred; when Thackeray does the same, there is no such compactness, and the manner trails away where we cannot follow it. Dramatically it seems clear that the method of Esmond has the advantage over the method of Vanity Fair.
"She is thinking of her husband," ruminates Mrs. Latimer. "She is very much in love with him, which is a good thing, seeing that the young man is disenchanted, and ready to lay his homage at the feet of another." It is quite dusk when they start for home. Cecil nestles close to Violet, who kisses her tenderly. The child's love is above suspicion or doubt, and very grateful to her aching heart.
Nothing is more certain than that a schoolboy gathers much of his most valuable instruction when his lesson is not absolutely before him. In the same sense the more mature student will receive most important benefit, when he shuts his book, and goes forth in the field, and ruminates on what he has read.
George, in his domestic character of Bluffy, to take leave of Quebec and Malta and insinuate a sponsorial shilling into the pocket of his godson with felicitations on his success in life, it is dark when Mr. George again turns his face towards Lincoln's Inn Fields. "A family home," he ruminates as he marches along, "however small it is, makes a man like me look lonely.
"He has adopted the following plan, in which he will preserve till his dying day: He dresses at seven, then goes into his closet and has his hair dressed. At eight o'clock he says his prayers, then hears mass, and when this is over he takes chocolate and an enormous pinch of snuff, over which his big nose ruminates for some minutes; this is his only pinch in the whole day.
But sometimes things may be made darker by definition. I see a cow, I define her, Animal quadrupes ruminans cornutum. But a goat ruminates, and a cow may have no horns. Cow is plainer. BOSWELL. 'I think Dr. Franklin's definition of Man a good one "A tool-making animal." JOHNSON. 'But many a man never made a tool; and suppose a man without arms, he could not make a tool.
Sigismund revolves these sad thoughts too, amid his world-wide diplomacies, and efforts to heal the Church. "Pledged for one hundred thousand gulden," sadly ruminates Sigismund; "and fifty thousand more borrowed since, by little and little; and more ever needed, especially for this grand Spanish journey!" these were his sad thoughts.
Think of a man's swinging dumb-bells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him! Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking. When a traveller asked Wordsworth's servant to show him her master's study, she answered, "Here is his library, but his study is out of doors."
If there were no contrasting memory, no secret sense of weariness amid kisses and caresses and caprices pretty enough for occasional use, the dessert of love's feasts, but never really touching the man's deeper life. "It must be that some important elements have been left out of my composition," he ruminates, grimly. Could even madame have moved him to a headlong passion?
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