My readers from time to time chide me for what they perceive as unseemly irreverence, although I must suppose they are my readers because they enjoy my irreverence towards holy cows other than their own. I do not say this to chide these readers. It is human nature to be amused until one’s own ox is gored. I say it to preface some words on the uses and abuses of irreverence.
My epigraph is taken from the first volume of Lewis Carroll’s last novel, Sylvie and Bruno, which unlike his novels about Alice is today very largely forgotten. The sentiment is expressed by Arthur, the protagonist in one of the novel’s plots, and it is one in a series of strictures on the state of the Anglican Church in Victorian England.
