There have been within a fortnight eight failures of the highest consequence in London. Brown went a few evenings since to Davenport's, and on his coming in he talked about bad news in the city with such a face I began to think of a national bankruptcy. I did not feel much surprised and was rather disappointed. Carlisle, a bookseller on the Hone principle, has been issuing pamphlets from his shop in Fleet Street called the Deist. He was conveyed to Newgate last Thursday; he intends making his own defence. I was surprised to hear from Taylor the amount of money of the bookseller's last sale. What think you of £25,000? He sold 4000 copies of Lord Byron. I am sitting opposite the Shakspeare I brought from the Isle of Wight--and I never look at him but the silk tassels on it give me as much pleasure as the face of the poet itself.[89]
In my next packet, as this is one by the way, I shall send you the Pot of Basil, St. Agnes Eve, and if I should have finished it, a little thing called the Eve of St. Mark. You see what fine Mother Radcliff names I have--it is not my fault--I do not search for them. I have not gone on with Hyperion--for to tell the truth I have not been in great cue for writing lately--I must wait for the spring to rouse me up a little. The only time I went out from Bedhampton was to see a chapel consecrated--Brown, I, and John Snook the boy, went in a chaise behind a leaden horse. Brown drove, but the horse did not mind him. This chapel is built by a Mr. Way, a great Jew converter, who in that line has spent one hundred thousand pounds. He maintains a great number of poor Jews--_Of course his communion plate was stolen_. He spoke to the clerk about it--The clerk said he was very sorry, adding, "_I dare shay, your honour, it's among ush_."
The chapel is built in Mr. Way's park. The consecration was not amusing. There were numbers of carriages--and his house crammed with clergy--They sanctified the Chapel, and it being a wet day, consecrated the burial-ground through the vestry window. I begin to hate parsons; they did not make me love them that day when I saw them in their proper colours. A parson is a Lamb in a drawing-room, and a Lion in a vestry. The notions of Society will not permit a parson to give way to his temper in any shape--So he festers in himself--his features get a peculiar, diabolical, self-sufficient, iron stupid expression. He is continually acting--his mind is against every man, and every man's mind is against him--He is a hypocrite to the Believer and a coward to the unbeliever--He must be either a knave or an idiot--and there is no man so much to be pitied as an idiot parson. The soldier who is cheated into an Esprit du Corps by a red coat, a band, and colours, for the purpose of nothing, is not half so pitiable as the parson who is led by the nose by the Bench of Bishops and is smothered in absurdities--a poor necessary subaltern of the Church.