The Bishop of London is a man
of very great ability, humane, placable, generous, munificent; very
agreeable, but not to be trusted with great interests where calmness
and judgment are required: unfortunately, my old and amiable
school-fellow, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has melted away before
him, and sacrificed that wisdom on which we all founded our
security.... Whatever happens, I am not to blame. I have fought my
fight. Farewell"
A little later he wrote to an old friend:--
"I don't like writing to the Bishop of London: it is making a fuss,
and looks as if I regretted the part I had taken on Church Reform,
which I certainly do not--but I should be much annoyed if the Bishop
were to consider me as a perpetual grumbler against him and his
measures--I really am not: I like the Bishop and like his
conversation--the battle is ended, and I have no other quarrel with
him and the Archbishop but that they neither of them ever ask me to
dinner. You see a good deal of the Bishop, and as you have always
exhorted me to be a good boy, take an opportunity to set him right as
to my real dispositions towards him, and exhort him, as he has gained
the victory, to forgive a few hard knocks."
In the summer of 1839 Courtenay Smith died suddenly, and left no will.[130]
He had accumulated wealth in India, and a third part of it now passed to
his brother Sydney.
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