Penelope, Volume III by William Pitt Scargill

It is now necessary to return to Smatterton. As soon as Penelope had closed the eyes of the poor sufferer, and had heard from the lips of the elder Mr Darnley those compliments which his politeness and good feeling led him to pay her on the ground of her attention to the sick and the desolate, she returned to her father at the rectory, and related to him all the occurrences of that eventful morning. He listened with patient attention, for he loved to hear his daughter's voice. But he expressed some feeling of impatience at what he was pleased to call the coxcomical pride of Mr Darnley, the rector of Neverden.

We live in a strange world; for certainly it does seem strange to apply to a reverend divine of sixty years of age such an epithet as that of coxcomb. Yet after all there may be some truth and propriety in its application; for where the principle of conceitedness is very strong and belongs essentially to the character, age cannot remove it; years may make some difference in the mode of its display and the peculiarity of its development, but the principle remains the same. The reason why young people have the almost exclusive reproach of coxcombry and conceit is, that they have had as yet but little opportunity of comparing themselves with the rest of the world. When youth is over, and the conflicts and agitations of life have brought the mind much into contact with other minds, then the relative strength of the character is felt and appreciated, then the man knows himself to be what he is, and necessarily ceases to conceit himself to be what he is not. But when, as was the case with Mr Darnley the elder, it happens that a man during the course of his life has but little intercourse with the world, and when that little has no portion or part whatever of rivalry, contradiction, or opposition, then the delusions of conceit and vanity may endure to the last. Now Mr Darnley was not only constitutionally a coxcomb, but his situation was also peculiarly favorable for the cultivation and strengthening of this habit of mind. Yet with all this, and notwithstanding even his occasional moroseness, he was not by any means void of feeling, or without a susceptibility of kind emotions. The scene which he had witnessed in the poor man's cottage made an impression on his mind, and that impression certainly was in favour of Penelope. But he did not suffer that impression to make any immediate alteration in his general thoughts and deportment towards her. He had therefore parted with her at the cottage coldly, formally, and politely.