“’Tis one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall”

The expression “’Tis one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall” distinguishes being placed under moral pressure from surrendering to it. Quoted from Measure for Measure at the opening of Chapter LXVI, it frames a chapter in which Rosamond and Lydgate face financial and social distress, while Lydgate’s medical work offers a counterforce to his personal anxieties.

Source and Placement

The line appears as the chapter epigraph, attributed to Measure for Measure. Its balanced construction separates two stages: temptation, which confronts a person, and falling, which names the person’s response. The compact contrast gives the chapter a moral vocabulary before its narrative turns to the couple’s strained exchange.

Temptation and Response

Rosamond fears disgrace among the people they know and the prospect of living in misery. When Lydgate softens toward her, she weeps and says she wishes she had died with their baby. Her distress exerts a powerful effect on him: he draws close, presses her head against his cheek, and offers comfort, though he cannot promise to protect her from the hardship she fears.

The epigraph does not make the difference between pressure and surrender simple. Lydgate wants to excuse Rosamond, yet the narrator observes that this very impulse leads him to think of her as belonging to a feebler species. His tenderness and his condescending judgment coexist; in the moment, she has mastered him. The quotation’s distinction therefore resonates with a scene in which emotional influence complicates any clear account of weakness, responsibility, or yielding.

Work as Counterforce

The chapter turns from the domestic encounter to Lydgate’s practice. Personal cares have left him without the free energy for spontaneous research and speculative thought, but the immediate demands of patients draw him out of himself. Their needs require fresh judgment and sympathy, giving his work a sustaining force amid anxiety and his sense that his intellectual powers are declining.

The medical service he offers is presented not merely as routine, but as direct attention to another person’s trial. In this setting, the epigraph’s contrast between temptation and falling is set beside a recurring demand to respond to others: Lydgate cannot remove his private troubles, yet at the bedside and in private houses he can act for someone else. The line thus serves as a moral lens on a chapter where vulnerability may sway people, while practical care gives them a way to turn outward.