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I must for the present leave my readers to imagine the state
of Mr Harding's mind after reading the above article. They
say that forty thousand copies of The Jupiter are daily sold, and
that each copy is read by five persons at the least. Two hundred
thousand readers then would hear this accusation against him;
two hundred thousand hearts would swell with indignation at
the griping injustice, the barefaced robbery of the warden
of Barchester Hospital! And how was he to answer this? How
was he to open his inmost heart to this multitude, to these
thousands, the educated, the polished, the picked men of
his own country; how show them that he was no robber, no
avaricious, lazy priest scrambling for gold, but a retiring,
humble-spirited man, who had innocently taken what had
innocently been offered to him?
'Write to The Jupiter,' suggested the bishop.
'Yes,' said the archdeacon, more worldly wise than his
father, 'yes, and be smothered with ridicule; tossed over and
over again with scorn; shaken this way and that, as a rat in
the mouth of a practised terrier. You will leave out some
word or letter in your answer, and the ignorance of the cathedral
clergy will be harped upon; you will make some small
mistake, which will be a falsehood, or some admission, which
will be self-condemnation; you will find yourself to have
been vulgar, ill-tempered, irreverend, and illiterate, and the
chances are ten to one, but that being a clergyman, you will
have been guilty of blasphemy! A man may have the best of
causes, the best of talents, and the best of tempers; he may write
as well as Addison, or as strongly as Junius; but even with all
this he cannot successfully answer, when attacked by The Jupiter.
In such matters it is omnipotent. What the Czar is in Russia, or
the mob in America, that The Jupiter is in England. Answer
such an article! No, warden; whatever you do, don't do that.
We were to look for this sort of thing, you know; but we need
not draw down on our heads more of it than is necessary.'
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