He picked up his volume from the table and walked off with it to the window-seat.
"You are learning bad temper from a book?" asked Mr. Simeon, taking off his spectacles and following Brother Copas with mild eyes of wonder.
"Certainly.… If ever fortune, my good sir, should bring you (which God forbid!) to end your days in our College of Noble Poverty, you will understand the counsel given by the pilot to Pantagruel and his fellow-voyagers—that considering the gentleness of the breeze and the calm of the current, as also that they stood neither in hope of much good nor in fear of much harm, he advised them to let the ship drive, nor busy themselves with anything but making good cheer. I have done with all worldly fear and ambition; and therefore in working up a hearty Protestant rage (to which a hasty promise commits me), I can only tackle my passion on the intellectual side. Those fellows down at the Club are no help to me at all.… My book? It is the last volume of Mr. Froude's famous History of England. Here's a passage now—
"'The method of Episcopal appointments, instituted by Henry VIII, as a temporary expedient, and abolished under Edward as an unreality, was re-established by Elizabeth, not certainly because she believed that the invocation of the Holy Ghost was required for the completeness of an election which her own choice had already determined, not because the bishops obtained any gifts or graces in their consecration which she herself respected, but because the shadowy form of an election, with a religious ceremony following it, gave them the semblance of spiritual independence, the semblance without the substance, which qualified them to be the instruments of the system which she desired to enforce. They were tempted to presume on their phantom dignity, till a sword of a second Cromwell taught them the true value of their Apostolic descent.…
"That's pretty well calculated to annoy, eh? Also, by the way, in its careless rapture it twice misrelates the relative pronoun; and Froude was a master of style. Or what do you say to this?—
"'But neither Elizabeth nor later politicians of Elizabeth's temperament desired the Church of England to become too genuine. It has been more convenient to leave an element of unsoundness at the heart of an institution which, if sincere, might be dangerously powerful. The wisest and best of its bishops have found their influence impaired, their position made equivocal, by the element of unreality which adheres to them. A feeling approaching to contempt has blended with the reverence attaching to their position, and has prevented them from carrying the weight in the councils of the nation which has been commanded by men of no greater intrinsic eminence in other professions.'
"Yet another faulty relative!
"'Pretensions which many of them would have gladly abandoned have connected their office with a smile. The nature of it has for the most part filled the Sees with men of second-rate abilities. The latest and most singular theory about them is that of the modern English Neo-Catholic, who disregards his bishop's advice, and despises his censures; but looks on him nevertheless as some high-bred, worn-out animal, useless in himself, but infinitely valuable for some mysterious purpose of spiritual propagation.'"
Brother Copas laid the open volume face-downward on his knee—a trivial action in itself; but he had a conscience about books, and would never have done this to a book he respected.
"Has it struck you, Mr. Simeon," he asked, "that Froude is so diabolically effective just because in every fibre of him he is at one with the thing he attacks?"