He dismissed the uninnovating clergy from their city livings, and brought in his own partisans, who should instruct their hearers what was now the right way of thinking and acting in Bristol to keep pace with the times; […]

While these stories serve to make us conscious of the implications of being a “have” or a “have-not,” as with all good literature, they do much more than that. They provide a glimpse into lives that we might never encounter elsewhere.

Bring sweet philosophy along, In metaphysic dreams.

Such hedging is necessitated by the lack of in-depth knowledge of the contents, which also gives free rein to the scripting of unsubstantiated factoids concerning the book.