If piety
consisted in the defence of these--if it was impious to struggle for
their abrogation, I have indeed led an ungodly life.... To read,
however, his Lordship a lesson of good manners, I had prepared for him
a chastisement which would have been echoed from the _Segrave_ who
banqueteth in the castle,[129] to the idiot who spitteth over the
bridge at Gloucester."
But the Bishop had made a rather misplaced appeal for compassion, on
account of his failing eyesight; and Sydney, flinging him contemptuously on
one side, passed on to the more formidable Bishop of London.--
"I was much amused with what old Hermann says of the Bishop of
London's _AEschylus_. 'We find,' he says, '_a great arbitrariness of
proceeding, and much boldness of innovation, guided by no sure
principle_'; here it is: _qualis ab incepto_. He begins with AEschylus,
and ends with the Church of England; begins with profane, and ends
with holy innovations--scratching out old readings which every
commentator had sanctioned; abolishing ecclesiastical dignities which
every reformer had spared; thrusting an anapaeest into a verse, which
will not bear it; and intruding a Canon into a Cathedral, which does
not want it; and this is the Prelate by whom the proposed reform of
the Church has been principally planned, and to whose practical wisdom
the Legislature is called upon to defer.
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