Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/228



capacity, under whose joint tuition he might graduate. 'Who knows,' said I, 'but he may immortalize himself at the University, by giving his name to a pudding?'"

In his medieval tale he takes up the Church as an institution, with his favorite, back-handed, historical thrust. The Saxons, it seems, had attacked the Bangor monastery and killed twelve hundred monks:

"This was the first overt act in which the Saxons set forth their new sense of a religion of peace. It is alleged, indeed, that these twelve hundred monks supported themselves by the labour of their own hands. If they did so, it was, no doubt, a gross heresy; but whether it deserved the castigation it received from Saint Augustin's proselytes, may be a question in polemics. the superficial facts that the lands, revenues, privileges, and so forth, which once belonged to Druids and so forth, now belonged to abbots, bishops, and so forth, who, like their extruded precursors, walked occasionally in a row, chanting unintelligible words, and never speaking in common language but to exhort the people to fight; having, indeed, better notions than their predecessors of building, apparel, and cookery; and a better knowledge of the means of obtaining good wine, and of the final purpose for which it was made."
 * * * The rabble of Britons must have seen little more than

To such as this we have Thackeray's counter-blast, with admonition,—

"And don't let us give way to the vulgar prejudice that clergyman are an overpaid and luxurious body of men. * * * From reading the works of some modern writers of repute, you would fancy that a parson's life was passed in gorging himself with plum-pudding and port wine; and that his Reverence's fat chaps were always greasy with the crackling of tithe pigs. Cari-*