[171] The introduction as a regular feature of "Comic Bible Sketches," of a kind which Mr Bradlaugh and Mrs Besant were not prepared to defend.
[172] 23rd January 1883.
[173] March 1883.
[174] To do Mr Morley justice, it should be acknowledged that he unsaid his vindication in the same book.
[175] It was printed in the National Reformer of 1st April 1883.
[176] Cited in National Reformer, 18th February, p. 101.
[177] The hon. members were: Lord Galway, Messrs Foljambe and Nicholson, and Colonel Seely.
[178] A barrister wrote to Bradlaugh enclosing a letter from his daughter, aged fifteen, at school at Frankfort, telling how the English chaplain there called and asked all the English girls at the school to sign a petition against the Affirmation Bill (National Reformer, 15th April 1883).
[179] Lucretius, ii. 646-651. It was thought notable that the orator did not allude to the kindred passage in his beloved Homer (Odyssey, vi. 41), splendidly rendered by Lucretius (iii. 18-22), and choicely paraphrased by Tennyson in his poem "Lucretius." The best expression in English verse of the idea in the passage quoted by Gladstone is again Tennyson's—the great passage a the close of the "Lotos Eaters."
[180] Bradlaugh later publicly specified Newdegate as having been tipsy, "not for the first time;" and Newdegate, though denying the charge, did not bring an action for libel.