After Sir Walter had tried and failed, Lord Liverpool and the Duke of York undertook to speak to Mr Norrell on the subject, but Mr Norrell could not be persuaded by any of them to view Strange’s proposed departure with any thing other than horror.

“Have you considered, sir,” said Strange, “the great respect that it will win for English magic?”

“Oh, I dare say it might,” said Mr Norrell peevishly, “but nothing is so likely to evoke the Raven King and all that wild, mischievous sort of magic as the sight of an English magician upon a battlefield! People will begin to think that we raise fairy-spirits and consult with owls and bears. Whereas it is my hope for English magic that it should be regarded as a quiet, respectable sort of profession – the sort of profession in fact …”

“But, sir,” said Strange, hastily interrupting a speech he had heard a hundred times before, “I shall have no company of fairy knights at my back. And there are other considerations which we would do very wrong to ignore. You and I have often lamented that we are continually asked to do the same sorts of magic over and over again. I dare say the exigencies of the war will require me to do magic that I have not done before – and, as we have often observed to each other, sir, the practice of magic makes the theory so much easier to understand.”

But the two magicians were too different in temperament ever to come to an agreement upon such a point. Strange spoke of braving the danger in order to win glory for English magic. His language and metaphors were all drawn from games of chance and from war and were scarcely likely to find favour with Mr Norrell. Mr Norrell assured Mr Strange that he would find war very disagreeable. “One is often wet and cold upon a battlefield. You will like it a great deal less than you suppose.”

For several weeks in January and February 1811 it seemed as if Mr Norrell’s opposition would prevent Strange’s going to war. The mistake that Sir Walter, Lord Liverpool, the Duke of York and Strange had all made was to appeal to Mr Norrell’s nobility, patriotism and sense of duty. There is no doubt that Mr Norrell possessed these virtues, but there were other principles which were stronger in him and which would always counter any higher faculty.

Fortunately there were two gentlemen at hand who knew how to manage matters rather better. Lascelles and Drawlight were as anxious as every body else that Strange should go to Portugal and in their opinion the best method to achieve it was to play upon Mr Norrell’s anxiety over the fate of the Duke of Roxburghe’s library.