Lavengro by George Borrow (read me a book txt) 📕

honest heart for what is false, base and cruel. A certain clergyman wrote with much heat against the Papists in the time of ⸻349 who was known to favour the Papists, but was not expected to continue long in office, and whose supposed successor,350 the person, indeed, who did succeed him, was thought to be hostile to the Papists. This divine, who obtained a rich benefice from the successor of ⸻351 who during352 time had always opposed him in everything he proposed to do, and who, of course, during that time affected to be very inimical to Popery⁠—this divine might well be suspected of having a motive equally creditable for writing against the Papists, as that which induced him to write for them, as soon as his patron, who eventually did something more for him,353 had espoused their cause; but what motive, save an honest one, can the present writer have, for expressing an abhorrence of Popery? He is no clergyman, and consequently can expect neither benefices nor bishoprics, supposing it were the fashion of the present, or likely to be the fashion of any future administration to reward clergymen with benefices or bishoprics, who, in the defence of the religion of their country write, or shall write, against Popery, and not to reward those who write, or shall write, in favour of it, and all its nonsense and abominations.

“But if not a clergyman, he is the servant of a certain society which has the overthrow of Popery in view, and therefore,” etc. This assertion, which has been frequently made, is incorrect, even as those who have made it probably knew it to be. He is the servant of no society whatever. He eats his own bread,354 and is one of the very few men in England who are independent in every sense of the word.

It is true he went to Spain with the colours of that society on his hat⁠—oh! the blood glows in his veins! oh! the marrow awakes in his old bones when he thinks of what he accomplished in Spain in the cause of religion and civilisation with the colours of that society in his hat, and its weapon in his hand, even the sword of the word of God; how with that weapon he hewed left and right, making the priests fly before him, and run away squeaking: “Vaya! qué demonio es este!”355 Ay, and when he thinks of the plenty of Bible swords which he left behind him, destined to prove, and which have already proved, pretty calthrops in the heels of Popery. “Halloo! Batuschca,” he exclaimed the other night on reading an article in a newspaper;356 “what do you think of the present doings in Spain? Your old friend the zingaro, the gitano who rode about Spain, to say nothing of Galicia, with the Greek Buchini behind him as his squire, had a hand in bringing them about; there are many brave Spaniards connected with the present movement357 who took Bibles from his hands, and read them and profited by them, learning from the inspired page the duties of one man towards another, and the real value of a priesthood and their head, who set at nought the Word of God, and think only of their own temporal interests; ay, and who learned Gitano⁠—their own Gitano⁠—from the lips of the London Caloró, and also songs in the said Gitano, very fit to dumbfounder your semi-Buddhist priests when they attempt to bewilder people’s minds with their school-logic and pseudo-ecclesiastical nonsense, songs such as⁠—

“ ’Un Erajai
Sinaba chibando un sermon”358

But with that society he has long since ceased to have any connection; he bade it adieu with feelings of love and admiration more than fourteen years ago, so in continuing to assault Popery, no hopes of interest founded on that society can sway his mind⁠—interest! who, with worldly interest in view, would ever have anything to do with that society? It is poor and supported, like its founder Christ, by poor people; and so far from having political influence, it is in such disfavour, and has ever been, with the dastardly great, to whom the government of England has for many years past been confided, that the having borne its colours only for a month would be sufficient to exclude any man, whatever his talents, his learning, or his courage may be, from the slightest chance of being permitted to serve his country either for fee, or without. A fellow who unites in himself the bankrupt trader, the broken author, or rather bookmaker, and the laughed-down single speech spouter of the House of Commons, may look forward, always supposing that at one time he has been a foaming radical, to the government of an important colony. Ay, an ancient fox who has lost his tail may, provided he has a score of radical friends, who will swear that he can bark Chinese, though Chinese is not barked but sung, be forced upon a Chinese colony, though it is well known that to have lost one’s tail, is considered by the Chinese in general as an irreparable infamy, whilst to have been once connected with a certain society, to which, to its honour be it said, all the radical party are vehemently hostile, would be quite sufficient to keep anyone not only from a government, but something much less, even though he could translate the rhymed Sessions of Hariri,359 and were versed, still retaining his tail, in the two languages360 in which Kien-Loung wrote his Eulogium on Moukden, that piece which, translated by Amyot, the learned Jesuit, won the applause of the celebrated Voltaire.

No! were the author influenced by hopes of fee or reward, he would, instead of writing against Popery,