Analyze the passage that Christopher quotes from a ''proper novel'' explain its meaning and significance.

Christopher footnotes the following quote: 'I am veined with iron, with silver and with streaks of common mud. I cannot contract into the firm fist which those clench who do not depend on stimulus.' He uses this quote to explain that he does not generally like 'proper novels' because they contain sentences, like this one, that he does not understand. It is a quote from Virginia Woolf's The Waves. The quote seems to suggest that the person 'veined with iron, with silver and with streaks of common mud' has the potential to be decisive and strong (iron, silver) but is also base and cowardly (mud) which perhaps stops them from being able to act decisively and without doubt, which closely associates itself with Hamlet. It is therefore significant that this sentence is incomprehensible to Christopher (and note, also to his family).